The Haryana government will provide Rs.7.5 billion (~$116.38 million) loan to distribution companies (DISCOMs) in Haryana at a concessional rate of interest (about 3 percent lower than the market rate) under the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) program.

The UDAY program was established to address the overwhelming DISCOM debt in India. Haryana joined the UDAY program in March 2016. The outstanding debt of the state’s DISCOMs was Rs.346 billion (~$5.37 billion) at the time it joined UDAY.

Out of the total debt Rs.346 billion ($5.37 billion), 75 percent of the debt amounting to Rs.259.5 ($4.02 billion), has already been taken over by the state government and bonds issued at an average interest rate of 8.2 percent per annum.

The state has also implemented Urban Feeder Sanitization and Mhara Gaon Jagmag Gaon (MGJG) programs to facilitate accurate reading of energy meters via replacement of defective, faulty, burnt, glass broken, no display, inconsistent, electromechanical, and old version meters; minimizing occurrence of theft of energy.

Mercom previously reported that the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission (HERC) released a discussion paper on HERC (Terms and Conditions for Determination of Tariff from Renewable Energy Sources, Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) and Renewable Energy Certificate (REC)) Regulations 2017, to facilitate renewable energy development in the state with an emphasis on solar.

Image credit: “Loan” (CC BY 2.0) by Got Credit