MSMEs want discoms to pass benefits to industry

New Delhi, May 20 (KNN) Power Minister Piyush Goyal today released his report card for the two years where he said that India is a power surplus nation. The Government has set a target of 24x7 affordable environment friendly ‘Power for All’ by 2022 – to achieve by 2019.

Meanwhile KNN caught up the industrials from the MSME sector from across the country to their experience with power in the last two years.

Manmohan Gaind, Secretary General of Manesar Industries Welfare Association (MIWA) said that many things have been done in Power sector but state Discoms don’t want to apply those schemes.

“What has happened in this power sector, they (Government) have taken out a policy to take care of all the Discoms debts. There are huge benefits to Discoms and they should reduce the rates because of these benefits. But Discoms are trying to increase the rates. This is one big issue but otherwise power generation and power supply has been very good since last two years,” Gaind said.

He further explained that the only problem is the rate, the rate is too high. Rate has to be brought down to international level.

“We are competing companies with internationally. If China has got Rs. 5 per Unit so I can’t pay Rs. 10. This is an issue but they can do it. The reforms which Modi Government has brought can bring down the power tariff by at least Rs. 1.50. Today they have surplus power,” he added.

Gaind said that under the distribution side there is a complete monopoly of state PSUs and Discoms. “So these people, they are totally inefficient. Due to political reasons, they want to give all the freebies to the people and farmers just like what Arvind Kejriwal did. All that freebies are not for the industries. What they are doing is that they are cross subsidizing us. Our tariff goes up,” MIWA Secretary General said.

Shailesh Aggarwal- President, Baddi Barootiwala Nalagarh Industries Association (BBNIA) said that two things have started to happen well as Piyush Goyal is a very dynamic person.

“The schemes like UDAY, Vidyut Parwah are bringing reforms in power sector. Due to these reforms we are looking at the low power tariff. It is good thing for industry if rates will go down and availability would increase. Now a days power tariff has not gone down and it is stable. But at the same time power availability is getting improved because of grid connectivity. Earlier there used to be the power cuts for more than four hours which now are going down. Power availability has improved every state of the country,” Aggarwal added.

On the other hand there are few who are not happy with the Power Ministry.

RC Joshi, President, Federation of Industry & Commerce of North Eastern Region (FINER) said that North-East is still reeling under power crisis which needs to be improved drastically.

“We have potential but power is not available.  Since 20 years we have been listening that power will be made available on demand. But nothing has happened. They have set a target to provide electricity by  2019, we hope for the same. But the power is not available for the industry. It has lot of fluctuation which causes lot of damage to our plant and industry. Systems are not in place,” Joshi said.

He explained that for industry, the power is a basic input. Government does not give importance to North-East. There is connectivity issue and they should transfer the surplus electricity to the Industries in North-East.

“We appealed them, let’s see what happens,” he said. (KNN Bureau)