NEW DELHI: The outstanding dues of power producers from distribution utilities have risen by more than 30 per cent to Rs 46,412 crore in June 2019 compared to the same month of the last year, showing stress in the sector. According to PRAAPTI portal, distribution companies owed a total of Rs 34,465 crore to power generation companies in June 2018. The portal was launched in May 2018 to bring in transparency in power purchase transactions between generators and discoms. In June this year, total overdue amount, which was not cleared even after 60 days of grace period offered by generators, stood at Rs 30,552 crore against Rs 21,739 crore in the same month in 2018. Power producers give 60 days to discoms for paying bills for the supply of electricity. After that, the outstanding becomes overdue and generators charge penal interest on that in most of the cases. In order to give relief to power generation companies, the Centre has enforced a payment security mechanism from August 1, 2019. Under this mechanism, the discoms are required to open letters of credit for getting power supplies. The data on the portal indicates that the outstanding, as well as the overdue amount, have increased over the preceding month. In May 2019, the total outstanding on discoms was Rs 43,814 crore while the total overdue amount was Rs 25,660 crore. Discoms in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir account for the major portion of dues to power generating companies, taking a longer duration of up to 839 days to make payments, the portal showed. Madhya Pradesh tops the list with 839 days to make payments, followed by Bihar (789 days), Andhra Pradesh (787 days), Haryana (787 days), Telangana (767 days) Karnataka (761 days), Tamil Nadu (760 days), Punjab (757 day) and Jammu & Kashmir (756 days) in that order. Overdues of independent power producers amount to over 62.27 per cent of the total overdue of Rs 30,552 crore on discoms. Among the public sector power generators, NTPC alone has an overdue amount of Rs 6,342.94 crore on discoms followed by NLC India at Rs 4,604 crore, THDC India at Rs 1,971.73 crore, NHPC at Rs 1,963.71 crore and Damodar Valley Corporation at Rs 843.79 crore.

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