House panel suggests guidelines for power trading margins

A Parliamentary panel has recommended the government to fix higher limit trading margin guidelines for power exchanges to bring down the cost of electricity in the country.

“The government or power regulator Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) should formulate guidelines whereby a higher limit of trading margin up to which the sellers should be allowed to benefit is fixed,” the Standing Committee on Energy suggested.

At present, the trading margins have been fixed by CERC at four paise per unit for any volume traded by a seller at any of the power exchanges in the country. The committee further said,”in the present scenario of power shortage in the country, the number of buyers are always going to be more than the number of sellers, the power exchanges may end up the increase in the rates of electricity and may not benefit the consumers as envisaged originally.”