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| WBSEDCL to miss revenue target |
| Margaret Williams / Kolkata Apr 06, 2009, 00:47 IST |
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State-owned West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company (WBSEDCL) is likely to miss its revenue target this fiscal, pegged at Rs 7,500 crore, due to its inability to achieve the targeted power export and limited power trading in the short term market.
The state owned power utility company earned a revenue of Rs 6,500 crore, a surplus of Rs 131 crore during 2007-08 fiscal.
“This fiscal we aimed for Rs 7500 crore as total revenue earnings, but it seems we will fall significantly short of our target, at least by Rs 100-200 crore or more. In the last two months revenues have significantly come down because of severe power shortage. We have not done quite well on the power export front as was expected and we have not been able to do much power trading in the short term market also, which could have earned us significantly high returns compared to trading in the day ahead market,” said Malay K De, chairman and managing director, WBSEDCL.
Lacking in power surplus is not the issue but lack of certainty on the amount of surplus, is what hinders power trading. "We knew there will be a surplus but because of lack of certainty we failed to commit it in the short term market.Certain degree of predictability in generation and supply is required to boost power trading business," explained De.
Although the power supply situation had improved over the last two weeks still this wouldn't help meet the revenue targets, he added.
The bulk of power trading this year, almost 60-70 per cent was through the real time operation route and day ahead market, leaving bare minimum for the short term market, where a power utility commits a certain amount of power 4 or 5 days in advance earning, almost Rs 2 or more per unit, compared to spot market prices, depending upon the highest bid.
On the power export front the expectation as per the tariff petition filed by WBSEDCL was Rs 2,200 crore this fiscal. WBSEDCL expected to export approximately 2,600 million units, but failed to achieve the fixed target.
Revenue earnings from export would be little more than Rs 1,000 crore, which although was higher by around 67 per cent compared to last fiscal, but significantly lower than the estimates, said De.
"All in all, we had a fair performance this year. We have not yet fixed next year's revenue targets, this year's revenue loss will definitely be factored in," he added.
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