The Hindu Business Line : As projects fall off schedule

THE Government's ambitious `Power for All by 2012' target, aimed at augmenting the country's power generation capacity by 1,00,000 MW by the end of the Eleventh Plan, seems to be floundering. The Power Ministry has scaled down the capacity addition target for the current Plan period by about 10 per cent to 36,956 MW, but officials fear that the actual realisation could be even lower.

Reflecting the scaled down target for additional generating capacity, the Ministry is likely to report Rs 33,339 crore as unutilised funds from its Tenth Plan allocation. According to official data, against a Plan outlay of Rs 1,43,399 crore as gross budgetary support for the Ministry of Power during the Tenth Plan, the anticipated utilisation is expected to be Rs 1,10,070 crore.

Capacity addition by all the three sectors — the Centre, States and the private sector — is likely to miss the respective targets during the current Plan period owing to a variety of factors, including inadequate feedstock linkages and procedural delays. Private projects that have slipped from the Tenth Plan schedule include Reliance's 500 MW Jamnagar project, the AV Birla Group-promoted 578 MW Bina project and BPL Group's 520 MW Ramagundam project, all of which are yet to achieve financial closure.

In the Central sector, NTPC has dropped the 490-MW Dadri project, while four projects based on the 660-MW technology — with a cumulative capacity of around 3,800 MW — are not likely to come up in the current Plan period. Damodar Valley Corporation's 1,000 MW Maithon project is also being counted out of the Tenth Plan schedule. Among State sector projects, the Uttar Pradesh Government's 500 MW Anpara `C' project is set to be delayed beyond the Tenth Plan as the modalities of its execution were revisited midway by the State Government, officials said.

In order to achieve the `Power for All' target, the Government had factored in a capacity addition of around 41,000 MW in the Tenth Plan and a whopping 59,000 MW targeted for the Eleventh Plan period.

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