The Centre plans to more than double the corpus for the revised accelerated power development and reform programme (APDRP) taking the fund availability under this scheme from Rs 6,000 crore to Rs 14,500 crore to be spent over the next five years.The APDRP is a central scheme where funds are extended to states to undertake reform measures. The initial APDRP scheme did not yield the desired results for certain “structural flaws” in the policy and therefore the Centre is going to come out with a revised policy called APDRP II.The revised scheme, which is expected to be taken up by the Union Cabinet shortly, would not only set a firm timeline for states accessing these funds to reduce their aggregate technical and commercial losses but as an incentive, the Centre would convert as much as 50 per cent of the loans as grant in case a state is able to sustain the loss reduction for a period of time.In the 10th Plan, the Centre had allocated around Rs 6000 crore for this programme. But under the revised scheme, where the aim is to reduce the aggregate transmission and commercial (AT&C) losses to 15 per cent in fixed time period, the fund availability is going to be Rs 14,500 crore.
