With Coimbatore district going back to nearly 12 hours of unscheduled power cut a day, industries are hoping that the State Government will provide Value Added Tax (VAT) exemption on diesel purchased for generator sets.
An industry source said that industries had power supply just for about five hours a day. Almost all the industries, except the micro units, had captive generator sets. The industries now paid Rs. 8.70 a litre (24.42 per cent) Value Added Tax for the diesel purchased to run the generator sets.
The industries have made several appeals to the State Government to provide VAT exemption on the diesel purchased for the generators.
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The State Government was expected to release details of the MSME special package in the first week of April and an announcement in this regard would benefit the units.
Even if the exemption was provided for just one month, till the power shortage continued, it would benefit the units.
Most of them had lost orders and workers were returning home as they did not have work here. The units were operating only to cater to the pending orders, the source said.
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A meeting of the industrial associations was held here on Monday. It was decided at the meeting to wait till the first week of April.
“The next one month will be very difficult,” the source said. The State had nearly 3,500 MW of captive generator sets. The VAT exemption would enable the units to use these gensets and this would bring down the demand for grid power. The micro units need uninterrupted power supply for a specific duration.
The Tangedco says that it was supplying uninterrupted power supply to micro units for four hours a day.
The industries say the Tangedco supplied uninterrupted supply for four hours a day only for three months. However, now with priority for examination centres, the uninterrupted supply schedule is not maintained here.
The Kovai Power Driven Pumps and Spares Manufacturers’ Association said that it would organise protests if the situation did not improve.