Telangana, Assam to join UDAY scheme tomorrow

Telangana and Assam are slated to join the UDAY scheme meant for revival of loss making discoms tomorrow, which will result in overall net benefits of Rs 6116 crore and Rs 1,663 crore to them respectively.
"Telangana and Assam will join the UDAY scheme tomorrow in the capital at a function presided over by Power Minister Piyush Goyal. With this, number of states which have joined UDAY scheme will be 20," an official said.
"An overall net benefit of about Rs 6,116 crore and Rs 1,663 crore would accrue to Telangana and Assam respectively, under UDAY, by way of savings in interest cost, reduction in AT&C and transmission losses, interventions in energy efficiency, coal reforms, among others, during the period of turnaround," the official added.

Under the UDAY scheme, while Telangana would take over Rs 8,923 crore of the total Rs 11,897 crore of discom debt, Assam would take over Rs 928 crore out of total Rs 1,510 crore.
The scheme provides that the state government are required to take over 75 per cent of their respective discom debt outstanding as on September 30, 2015. UDAY mandates that the balance debt (25 per cent) would be re-priced or issued as state guaranteed discom bonds.
The official said that this would amount to annual saving in interest cost of Rs 387 crore for Telangana and Rs 37 crore for Assam.

Besides, the interest cost on future borrowings is also expected to reduce, providing a saving of around Rs 30-40 crore to the two states.

In case of Telangana, the reduction in aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses and transmission losses to 9.95 per cent and 3 per cent respectively is likely to bring additional revenue of around Rs 1,476 crore during the period of turnaround.
Additional revenue of Rs 699 crore would accrue to Assam on reduction of AT&C losses and transmission losses to 15 per cent and 3.4 per cent respectively.
The gains to the states through demand side interventions in UDAY such as usage of energy-efficient domestic as well as industrial/commercial equipment is expected to be around Rs 1,200 crore and Rs 260 crore respectively.

Telangana and Assam are also expected to gain around Rs 2,250 crore and Rs 520 crore respectively on account of the support being extended by the Centre through various coal reform measures.