NTPC says will fall short on target

Power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde on Wednesday claimed India would add nearly 74,964 mw of power by the end of the Eleventh Plan, which is 95% of the generation target set.

But NTPC, India’s largest power utility accounting for a fifth of the country’s installed capacity, in a separate presentation at the CLSA India Forum in Gurgaon this week, said it was likely to miss its target of 22 gigawatts by “6 to 9 months”.

Since April 2007, when the plan period began, NTPC has added 3.2 gw capacity with another 17.9 gw currently under construction. These under-construction projects are facing a delay of about a year.

NTPC chairman RS Sharma could not be contacted for his response.

In the presentation, NTPC said it was confident of having a generation capacity of 75 gw by fiscal 2017. It also plans to reduce its coal-based portfolio from the current 82% to 70% by then.

Rupesh Sankhe, analyst with Angel Broking, said NTPC is likely to miss its target by 30%. “So it would be difficult for the country to meet its overall target,” as evinced by Shinde.

NTPC is facing coal shortage for many of its running power plants and its two coal-based power plants of NTPC in Farakka (West Bengal) and Kahalgaon (Bihar) have been shut for almost two months. The two plants have an installed capacity of 3,900 mw.

The coal shortage is hurting the long-term prospects of the company so much that it has decided to import coal on its own from the international markets. At present, MMTC has the mandate to import coal for NTPC.

Earlier, inaugurating the Economic Editors’ conference on Tuesday, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee expressed concern over the power sector failing to meet capacity addition targets over the past many years.

He said power shortfall in 2020 would be extremely steep at the current pace of capacity addition.