Centre to tighten norms for UMPPs

The government has decided to tighten the norms for ultra mega power projects (UMPP) to deter companies from hoarding the projects and to ensure that projects are completed on time.

At a meeting of the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) on UMPPs today, it was decided to increase the performance guarantee in proportion to the number of projects a company bags, officials informed.

For instance, if a company bids for first project, the performance guarantee amount is fixed at Rs 300 crore. This is likely to be increased to Rs 450 crore if the same company is applying for the second project and Rs 600 crore for the third project.

Two UMPPs of 4,000 Mw each have already been awarded "" Sasan in Madhya Pradesh has been bagged by Reliance Power and Mundra in Gujarat, which is being built by Tata Power.

Reliance Power has also emerged as the winning bidder for the Krishnapatnam UMPP in Andhra Pradesh.

The fourth UMPP set to go under the government's hammer is Tilaiya UMPP in Jharkhand, while five are in pipeline.

The concept of UMPP was conceived by the government to fastrack the power capacity addition for solving the problem of power shortage in the country through a tariff-based competitive route through the public-private-partnership model.