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Pinning hopes on the new government's initiatives, NTPC today said plans to provide round-the-clock electricity to every household in the country translates to robust growth opportunities amid challenges faced by the power sector.
However, the country's largest power producer has also flagged concerns about the poor health of state electricity distribution companies.
Addressing the shareholders today, NTPC Chairman and Managing Director Arup Roy Choudhury said the new government's strong focus on tapping all possible sources also opens up new business opportunities for the company.
"The new government's vision of providing 24X7 power to each household translates into robust growth opportunities amid challenges for the sector," he said at the company's Annual General Meeting.
Among others, he said creation of Telangana provides further opportunities to set up new power projects. NTPC has the mandate to set up a 4,000 MW power plant in the new state.
State-owned NTPC has an installed generation capacity of 43,128 MW.
The utility is also looking to increase its green energy portfolio and currently, it has an installed renewable capacity of 95 MW.
With regard to challenges, NTPC chief mentioned high Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses as well as poor financial health of state distribution companies as concerns.
"Several measures have been introduced by the government which include R-APDRP scheme focused to reduce the AT&C losses to below 15% level," he said.
To help cash-strapped state discoms, the government is already working on a Financial Restructuring Plan (FRP).
"Some states like Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, etc have already started implementation of FRP. There has also been strategic rethink about the effectiveness of FRP and the ways and means to make such measure really effective," Choudhury added.
Noting that India has one of the lowest annual per capita power consumption of 917.18 Kwh, he said that demand, supply and consumption trends would be key to sectoral growth.
