Some Good News for India
Power Consumers in 2013!
Power Consumers in 2013!
From Free Power to No Power!
Before I share the good news with
you, let me put some facts before you. Riding on the promise of free power to
farmers, the Congress party came back to power in the state of Andhra Pradesh
in 2004. Today, the state has been reeling under continuous power deficit due
to a variety of reasons. What a transition from free power to no power! Most of
the AP farmers, businessmen and other citizens now get interrupted supply of
power that too only for a few hours, throwing their daily activities out of
gear.
This AP model has since been
followed by politicians in other states, with varying degrees of success. Many
more politicians will continue to promise free power in future.
When it comes to retaining or
attaining power, Indian politicians are very smart. Of late, they have started
promising free laptops/tablets to students. But with no electricity supply, how
will students use these “free” laptops? May be on herbal fuel, as promised by
the infamous Ramar Pillai a few decades back. In future, our politicians may
offer Apple tablets (tablet computers) as freebies, who knows!
Crashing Down and Sprinting Backwards:
A few weeks back, the Government
of India had tossed, in a cavalier way, a fresh crumb of Rs 2,000 crores to Air
India ,
which has been bleeding internally – I don’t know for how many years. The
state-owned Air India was once
the dominant airliner in India
but now its place has slipped to third or fourth due to intense competition.
Air India
has been on a perpetual life-support system and I hope the situation will
continue in future also.
Competing with Air India are other
public sector telecom companies, such as, BSNL and MTNL – sprinting towards
intensive care unit (ICU). In the last five years, BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam
Ltd) has come down from first place to fifth place now – being dethroned by the
likes of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.
Public sector oil marketing
companies, IOC, BPCL and HPCL too have been making huge losses, due to very
high subsidies on diesel, LPG and kerosene. And we’ve forgotten about their
losses. These OMCs have not been able to make fresh investments in
capacities/refineries or new exploration – negatively impacting India ’s energy
security.
Indian banks, mostly state-owned
ones, too may eventually and inevitably suffer big losses on account of their
loan exposure to such public sector companies with suspect fundamentals – technically
they may not lose money due to the perception that some of the loans enjoy
sovereign guarantee from the governments. But we never know for sure.
Restructuring or Bankruptcy?
Let us turn our attention to the financial situation of
our state power distribution companies or Discoms or state electricity boards
(SEBs), owned by state governments. The following is a quote from a Reserve
Bank of India
report of October 2012:
“Distribution of
power has come under financial stress, with state power distribution
companies (Discoms) sitting on an accumulated debt of Rs 1,90,000 crores as on March 2011. A
large amount of bank finance is stuck in bad loans to these Discoms.”
|
The accumulated losses of Discoms are Rs 2,46,000 crores. In
September 2012, the Government of India announced a debt restructuring package
for these Discoms. My feeling is that this debt restructuring is just a
disguise for prolonging bankruptcy.
Creative Resurrection:
One of the established tenets of
capitalism (of course, we say we are a socialist republic – which is mere
nonsense) is creative destruction – but in India , we have made a strong
foundation for the concept of “creative resurrection” – anything can be
resurrected and the resurrection process will continue for decades and
centuries!
Skills Deficit:
One of the reasons for India ’s
inability to increase productivity is skills deficit in critical areas. Leave
out critical areas, we seem to be short of miners also. Because Coal India has been
unable to mine coal necessary for power-generation companies. This year India ’s coal
shortage seems to be in the range of 20 percent, and the deficit is being
filled through costlier imported coal – losing precious foreign exchange in the
disorder.
Crores of Indians suffered heavily
at the end of July 2012 due to a power blackout in India ,
described by the media as the worst-ever in India ’s history.
Finally, the Good News!
When people are in distress,
human bondage will improve. We will come out of our cocoons and share our miseries
with our neighbours. And we will talk more on our mobile phones (provided the
battery does not run out due to lack of power supply). This is the silver
lining. And revenues for telecom service companies will increase.
The final good news for India
P.S.: The author in an independent investment analyst. His views are
personal. The opinions expressed in this article are with malice toward Indian
politicians.
- - -
