Even after making profits for eight consecutive years, Gujarat government’s premier body — the Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited or GUVNL — that purchases and sells electricity in bulk is sitting on a loss of over Rs 440 crore.
GUVNL was formed after a loss-making Gujarat Electricity Board (GEB) was unbundled on April 1, 2005 into separate seven companies with functional responsibilities of generation, transmission, distribution and trading of electricity. GUVNL also took over the assets, liabilities and personnel of GEB.
According to the latest annual report (2012-13) tabled in the Gujarat State Legislative Assembly a few days back, GUVNL is still sitting on a loss of Rs 442 crore. “Since the company inherited a loss of Rs 737.24 crore from erstwhile GEB, despite net profit for the eight consecutive years, the company has to carry forward a loss of Rs 442.56 crore,” states the annual report.
The carried forward losses of the erstwhile GEB was inherited by GUVNL so that the subsidiary companies start off with clean balance sheet.
“The quantum of profits have been very low, so GUVNL has not been able to even out the losses on a stand-alone basis. However, if all the subsidiaries of the GUVNL are concerned then the losses have long been met,” said KM Shingarpure, general manager (finance and accounts) of GUVNL which has GSECL, GETCO, PGVCL, UGVCL, MGVCL and DGVCL as its subsidiaries.
The profits of GUVNL has been dipping since the last three consecutive fiscal years. In 2012-13, the Profit After Tax (PAT) of the company stood at a mere Rs 13.81 crore, down by 80 percent from the Rs 67.29 crore in 2011-12. The PAT in 2010-11 stood at Rs 75.69 crore.
Despite the dipping profits, GUVNL has been doing good in power trading business. The total power sold by the company through bilateral arrangement and power exchanges during the year 2012-13 was 7147 million units amounting to Rs 2776 crore at an average rate of Rs 3.88 per unit. This sale was about 20 percent that the 5815 million units amounting to Rs 2182 crore (at an average rate of Rs 3.75 per unit) during the year 2011-12.
