MERC allows Reliance Infra to collect past dues of $860 million

REUTERS - Power utility Reliance Infrastructure said the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission had allowed the company to recover past dues totalling 55.5 billion rupees over six years.

The company's shares rose as much as 4.8 percent after the news. They closed up 3.5 percent.

The regulator also raised the amount of cross-subsidy surcharge, or a fee that consumers pay for using an operator's network to draw electricity from a rival utility, that Reliance can recover to about 8 billion rupees a year, compared with an annual 1 billion rupees earlier.

Reliance Infrastructure, whose chairman is billionaire Anil Ambani, said it would cut tariffs by 12 percent and 11 percent in the next two financial years, due to the lower cost of power procurement.

(Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan in Mumbai; Editing by Anand Basu)