With investment running into thousands of crores of rupees languishing due to fuel supply constraints for power plants, a mega delegation comprising heads of 24 private sector power companies will meet Power Minister M Veerappa Moily on Friday.
Private companies contributed 26 per cent — Rs 166,000 crore — of the total expenditure of Rs 618,000 crore in the power sector during the eleventh Plan period. The government wants private sector’s contribution to the overall funding in the sector to go up to more than a half over the next five years.
The list of power companies heads slated to meet Moily include Reliance Power Chief Executive Officer (CEO) J P Chalasani, Adani Power CEO R K Madan, GMR Energy President G Subbarao, Jindal Power Ltd’s Managing Director (MD) Sushil Maroo, Lanco Infratech CEO K Raja Gopal, Essar Power Director KVB Reddy and Torrent Power Chairman Sudhir Mehta. The delegation will be led by Association of Power producers (APP) Director General Ashok Khurana.
The agenda, this time, has been broadened to incorporate issues related to gas availability for projects, issues impacting mega power projects, hydro and solar plants, transmission projects and even the power distribution sector.
Earlier, in February, a similar delegation of CEOs had met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal this year.
The delegation will demand waiving-off the current condition of supplying 85 per cent power under Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) for graduating from provisional mega plant to a mega power plant.
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“In the distribution sector, there are more than 12,000 crore of unpaid dues to the private sector by the financially discoms. We will also take up the issue of fastracking the clearances for captive coal blocks,” a member of the delegation, who did not want to be quoted, told Business Standard.
The government has awarded 203 coal blocks to private companies. However, only 30 of them have started production so far. The lack of production from captive blocks has led the coal ministry to threaten cancelling allotments at the back of allegations from opposition parties of corruption in the allocation process.