By CL Jose
Employee cost nosedives by Rs1893.81cr in Fy22!
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM April 06-2022: The state’s sole power distributor, KSEBL, is set to pull off a coup!
Kerala State Electricity Board Ltd (KSEBL) is expected to announce its maiden annual profit ever since its establishment as a company in 2013 with three strategic units under it.
As per KSEBL’s revised estimates released about two weeks back, the company is likely to close the financial year 2021-22 (FY22) with a net profit of Rs171.77 crore against a whopping loss of Rs1822.35 crore the company had reported a year earlier.
[Though KSEBL as a company was established in 2008, it remained on paper until 2013, thanks to the hurdles in re-vesting the assets and liabilities with the newly established entity.]
Reversal of trend
The keen followers of KSEBL financials all these years may find the mention of ‘profit by KSEBL’ a bit hard to stomach, but the company has already reversed the years-old loss-making trend when it closed the third quarter ended December 31, 2021 (Q3) with a net profit of Rs411.83 crore and the 9-month period with a net profit to the tune of Rs480.99 crore.
It may be worth stressing here that the three-month period and the nine-month period in the previous financial year (FY21) had witnessed substantial losses to the tune of Rs267.51 crore (Q3) and Rs1304.45 crore (9M) respectively.
As per the revised estimates for 2021-22, KSEBL has generated a total revenue of Rs16,551.21 crore including a non-tariff income of Rs502.57 crore, against a revenue of Rs15,69.39 crore a year ago.
While the purchase of power is billed at Rs9053.86 crore for FY22, the comparable previous year’s purchase of power was invoiced at Rs8057.93 crore.
Employee cost is the key
Quite surprisingly, the employee cost during the year has nosedived by one-third or by Rs1893.81 crore during FY22, from Rs5639.86 crore to Rs3746.05 crore.
Businessbenchmark.news failed to reach out to KSEBL for a clarification as to how employee cost declined for KSEBL so sharply during FY22.
“KSEBL certainly has saved a good amount during the year on account of the deferment of ‘surrender of earned leave’, but that alone can’t explain the steep fall to this magnitude,” said a union leader.
Employee cost gains relevance here as the so-called ‘fat pay cheque’ enjoyed by the KSEBL employee’ has been in the eye of a controversy that has been raging ever since the salary hike in KSEBL last year.
Coming back to the profit & loss (P&L) account of FY22, the company could contain the net expenditure for the year at Rs16,379.44 crore, and this has also helped KSEBL arrive at a healthy bottom line for FY22.
KSEBL is expected to improve the net profit to Rs496.20 crore for the next year, 2022-23, according to the budget estimates prepared for the period.
