Rs 6,760-cr subsidy, Rs 156-cr power duty exemption to industry in 4 yrs

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, October 29

To attract new investment and provide succour to the existing industry, the state government has offered power tariff subsidy amounting to Rs 6,760 crore and electricity duty (ED) exemption worth Rs 156 crore to the industry in the past four years, officials have said.

By offering power supply at flat Rs 5 per unit and extending subsidy to small, medium and large industry for several years (see table for category-wise period), the government’s subsidy bill has been rising ever since it came up with the offer in 2018, the official figures have revealed.

The data compiled by the Invest Punjab — the state government’s one-stop unified regulator controlling 23 different departments to provide advanced single-window facilitation to investors — a copy of which is available with The Tribune, showed that the current fiscal’s power subsidy bill to the industry has been estimated to cost a whopping Rs 2,266 crore.

Sharing details, Invest Punjab Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Rajat Agarwal said on Friday that the power subsidy bill amounted to Rs 1,559 crore in 2020-21, Rs 1,480 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 1,455 crore in 2018-19.

The cheaper power and subsidy has resulted in increasing the number of industries and their production over the past four years, which was evident from the increase in the number of power connections and connected load in the industrial sector.

The official data suggested that the connected load of the industries in the state crossed a whopping 10,000 MW mark in the last fiscal 2020-21.

The year-to-year analysis showed that the number of total connections went up from 1,31,899 in 2016-17 to 1,37,073 in 2017-18, 1,39,209 in 2018-19, 1,43,570 in 2019-20, and 1,46,899 in 2020-21.

Similarly, the connected load increased from 8,891 MW in 2016-17 to 9,258 MW in 2017-18, 9,606 MW in 2018-19, 9,964 MW in 2019-20 and 10,110 MW in 2020-21.

When it comes to power consumption, the industry consumed 13,958 mega units (MUs) in 2016-17 to 16,032 MUs in 2017-18, 16,965 MUs in 2018-19, 18,270 MUs in 2019-20 and 16,428 MUs in 2020-21.

Categorisation

• Power supply at Rs5 per unit to all manufacturing units, IT/ ITES units in approved industrial parks.
• 100 per cent exemption from electricity duty for 15 years to anchor units, for seven years to MSMEs and start-ups, for 10 years to large units and for 10 years to the thrust sector.
• Incentives on par with new units for existing manufacturing units undertaking expansion, diversification or modernisation and new units in case of service industry.