The Finance Minister Arun Jaitely, has said that the states will have to finance the loss making discoms. He informed,” Power Ministry is chalking out a plan and it will hold talks with states and their discoms.”
The FM clarified the government’s move to sort huge debt burden on state discoms and said, “There was a meeting last week. The plan has been brought out by the power ministry and it will speak to defaulters and the respective government of the states.”
“The states will have to finance them, they cannot expect public sector banks to finance the deficit faced by power discoms. After we have negotiated that with the plans, then we will go ahead”, the Minister further stressed.
The Finance Minister also said that some states are not levying adequate electricity tariffs.
Jaitley said,”Some states were not charging adequate money for power which was affecting the discoms and these states cannot expect the PSU banks to fund the deficit of discoms.”
The combined debt of discoms is estimated to be more than Rs 3 lakh crore.
Power Minister Piyush Goyal had very clearly stressed, “the states would have to find a way out of the crisis. At the end of the day, the Government of India can only facilitate the turnaround of these discoms. And we cannot finance it.”
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