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In what has to be a first for public power utilities in India, starting April all transactions of the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited (BESCOM) have been made online. The driving force behind the goal to achieve a transparent accounting system and a leaner utility that delivers quality power at competitive rates is its Managing Director Bharat Lal Meena. Excerpts from an interview he gave Ravi Sharma:
The Karnataka Electricity Board, the forerunner to BESCOM, was known for its inefficiency. But today BESCOM is seen in a different light.
Yes. Our attitude and perception of what the utility is has undergone a change. We realised that we would have to reform ourselves by providing better services to consumers and increasing the efficiency of the organisation. Our goal is to ensure customer satisfaction and provide our customers with quality, reliable power at competitive rates. We hope to achieve this mission through the best practices in the construction and maintenance of our network, by setting and meeting high standards in customer service, and by optimising the usage of technical and human resource.
There has been an improvement in the utility's collection, which stands at around Rs.300 crores a month. What do you attribute this to?
The improvement has been mainly on account of our efficiency. The collection this year, even if you include collections from irrigation pumpsets, is 92 per cent, on an average.
If you exclude pumpsets the collection will be around 98 per cent. We have estimated an increase of Rs.500 crores a year. This is discounting the tariff increase and increase in the customer base.
The recovery of dues has perennially been a bugbear for the power utility. How do you stand on recoveries?
At the end of February our outstandings were to the tune of Rs.900 crores. A third of this is due from what was used by pumpsets. We hope that the government will take care of the dues from pumpsets. Besides this there are only two months of dues, with one of them being the month in review.
BESCOM has been constantly seeking a tariff hike, which at times has made it come into conflict with the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission.
It is not that we are constantly seeking an upward hike in tariffs. Tariffs depend on the government's contribution and the rate at which we buy power from the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited. Right now we are buying bulk power at Rs.2.28 a unit. Tariffs vary according to the consumer and there is cross subsidisation. The government has in its recent Budget announced a power subsidy of Rs.1,750 crores for 2005-06. This will be for the power consumed by pumpsets.
Industrialists feel that they are forced to pay some of the highest tariffs in the country because of cross subsidisation.
It is a fact. But gradually this will change: the gap between the actual cost of supply and the cost to the consumer will be narrowed and even closed. But this cannot happen overnight.
BESCOM has been able to bring down distribution losses to around 23 per cent, but the theft of power is still a problem. What component of the losses constitutes theft?
It is difficult to quantify the percentage of theft. But what we can say is that any loss above 12 per cent in the urban areas and above 20 per cent in the rural areas definitely has a component of theft.
What other initiatives have you put in place?
We are one of the first utilities to make a business plan for our officers. At the Executive Engineer level, we have formulated a business plan covering various parameters such as loss reduction, high tension-low tension line ratio reduction, increasing recoveries, reducing the number of complaints and restoring power within 24 hours. Targets for a three-year period starting 2004 have been fixed, keeping these parameters in mind. Each of the 24 Executive Engineers will implement the business plan in his/her respective area.
In what has to be a first for power utilities in India, we have launched demand side management for domestic consumers. Known as the BESCOM Efficient Lighting Program (BELP) and sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development under the Energy Conservation and Commercialisation initiative, we have shortlisted three vendors who offer cost-effective and power-efficient solutions (offering attractive discounts on energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). Consumers can go to the nearest BESCOM subdivision, collect a voucher, present the filled-in voucher at the nearest retail outlet, and obtain CFLs for which they have the option of either paying upfront or in nine instalments along with their monthly bills.
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