Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The private sector today asked the government to do a proper evaluation of the escrow capacity of individual states to ensure that they can support the payment obligations arising on account of the five ultra mega power projects.
Provision of an escrow is part of the crucial payment security mechanism worked out for these projects which ensures promoters of the projects as well as the lenders that they would get their money from SEBs on time.
The issue of a viable payment security mechanism came up during a meeting between the government and the private sector chaired by finance minister P. Chidambaram today. After the meet, power secretary RV Shahi said that ‘‘Power Finance Corporation would invite the expressions of interest by January 31 this year.’’
These five plants, each with a final capacity of 4,000 mw, are proposed to be set up at Sasan in Madhya Pradesh, Akaltara in Chhattisgarh, Mundra in Gujarat, Karvar in Karnataka and Ratnagiri in Maharashtra.
The total ballpark investments needed for these five coal-based stations is around Rs 70,000 crore. Each of these projects need to be executed in phases starting from say 800 MW, sources said.
From the private sector, Anil Ambani of Reliance Energy, Shashi Ruia of Essar, Anil Aggarwal from the Sterlite group attended the meet.
