NEPRA notifies revised power tariff with no big change

ISLAMABAD: The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has notified the revised electrify tariff without much change, Geo News reported. According to details the government has abolished the slab benefit for those poor consumers who exceed the usage of units of slab 1-200 and consume 201 units a month. This type of consumers will not be entitled to the first slab benefit rather they will be exposed to pay Rs14 even from 1 up to 201 units. As per notification, henceforth the tariff for consumers using electricity from 1-50 units per month would be Rs2/unit. However, for the consumers utilizing electricity between 51 and 100 units a month, the tariff has been fixed at Rs5.79 per unit. So much so, those who consume 101-200 units a month would have to pay Rs8.11 for every unit. On the other hand, the consumers who fall under the 201-300 slab would be charged Rs12.9 for every unit utilized. The 301-700-category would be billed at Rs16/unit, whereas each unit would cost the users Rs18 if the consumption crosses 700-plus units. And the agriculture consumers would now pay tariff of Rs10.35 per unit from October 1, 2013 onwards. More or less the raise in tariff is the same that the government had notified on September 30. The documents managed from Nepra also confirmed that government was not going to provide any relief to consumers but would maintain the same raise in power tariff earlier notified by the government. It is noteworthy that a raise was notified on September 30, which was later withdrawn after the include the subsidy portion in the electricity bills, not the government so the notification was withdrawn by the government and a review application was submitted to Nepra in the light of the SC’s decision. A day earlier, Nepra’s acting chairman Khawaja Naeem had said the authority would finalize the review of the application about the power tariff today (Thursday). “Now we will mention the subsidy every category of domestic consumer will get in the new electricity bills after the enforcement of the raise in power tariff from October 1, 2013.” It would just include the subsidy portion in electricity bills showing how much subsidy the government was still sharing with consumers in power tariff. Agriculture consumers who sustained massive losses after their standing crops got destroyed to a large extent in the wake of recent floods have been subjected to the raise in power tariff by Rs3.58 per unit. The government has taken this ruthless decision knowing the fact that 65 percent electricity gets consumed by consumers who fall under the slab of 1-300 units. The new tariff of consumers who consume 201-300 is Rs14 per unit. However, consumers of 301-700 units slab and over 700 units slab would enjoy the pervious slab benefit meaning that the government has taken care of the interest of affluent consumers. The lifeline consumers’ tariff will be maintained at Rs2 per unit, who consume just 50 units a month and for consumers who have been sanctioned load of 5kv and above, the off-peak tariff is now at Rs12.50 per unit and peak hours tariff will be at Rs18 per unit. As per the earlier tariff regime, the tariff for 1-100 unit slab consumers was at Rs5.79 per unit and for 101-300 units slab consumers Rs8.11 per unit, and tariff for 301-700 slab units consumers was at Rs12.33 per unit and Rs15.07 for over 700 slab consumers. And under the earlier tariff regime, off peak tariff was at Rs8.22 per unit and peak hours tariff stood at Rs13.99 per unit.