Replying to questions in the Rajya Sabha, the minister said the only way to counter theft and T&D losses was through technology and states would soon introduce remote metering and tamper proof electronic meters.

The state power minister's conference in February this year had set a deadline of December 31, 2001 to meter all legal consumers, he said, adding only 60 per cent of the legal consumers in the country were metered.

Kumaramangalam said Power Finance Corporation and other financial institutions were quite keen to provide aid to SEBs at lower interest to overcome the problem.

He said on an average, SEBs were incurring a loss of Rs 30 lakh for every additional mega watt generated as tariff and recovery did not match with production costs.