Jammu and Kashmir’s spending on power purchases has drained UT’s financial resources for years as a massive chunk of allocated expenditure is being spent on the procurement of electricity, reports said.
“Analysis of expenditure trends over the years reveals that the UT of JK faces hard budget constraints on account of the sizable committed nature of its expenditure.”
Additionally, the Treasury is also overburdened with expenditures spent on “interest payments, salaries, and pensions.”
These liabilities cumulatively constitute approximately 73 per cent of its total expenditure in fiscal year 2023-2024, leaving out little scope for the UT administration to create jobs and services.
Further, it said that of the out-of-total expenditure, a significant portion is spent on the purchase of power.
The document, however, does not delve into details but mentions that a significant amount of the overall expenditure is being executed on the purchase of power.
“In recent years, there has been some increase in the power receipts with improvement in metering. However, despite this, the gap between the cost of the power purchase bill and receipts is substantial,” reads the document.
It also states, “This has been in part financed from the UT’s budget and remains a cause of stress to the public finances.”
Besides, the official documents reveal that the hydel-power generation capacity is being doubled to 6647 MWs by 2026
The documents further reveal that JK is in the process of doubling the hydel power generation capacity by 2026 by developing 4 power projects having a power generation capacity of 3014 MW (1000 MW Pakal-Dul, 850 MW Rattle, 624 MW Kiru, and 540 MW Kwar).
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