We Are Paying The Price Of Myopic Vision Of Previous Government: Piyush Goyal
Expressing concerns over the import of coal despite being a surplus country in dry fuel, Piyush Goyal, the Minister of Independent Charge for Power, Coal and Renewable Energy and Mines mentioned that the situation is arising because the power plants have been designed not to function on indigenous coal and rather depend on the imported coal for their generation.
“Ideally we do not wish to import any coal from anywhere in the world. Unfortunately for India, in the last many years, the previous governments did not even imagine that we could be self sufficient, as a result of which there are around 83,000 MW coal based thermal power capacity has been set up in this country, either partially or completely dependent on imported coal”, said the minister, while speaking about three years of the government's performance
He mentions that despite being surplus, his government is helpless due to the myopic vision of the previous government, which forces these power plants to import coal for their power generation requirement.
The minister also mentioned that the ministry is doing its job to revive the stalled and stressed thermal projects in the country and looking for a comprehensive solution for the same, “We have come close to a resolution mechanism for the stressed power assets and already had extensive discussion with bankers and stakeholders”, said Goyal.
Bad loans in the power sector continue to weigh on India's banks and the government has been looking for ways to help ease the pain for companies struggling to service their debts.
The problem in the power sector NPAs has been a looming problem of the country. Similar is the case for Hydro projects which have been stalled for years.
“We have asked the state governments, if they take over the stressed power plants or the bankers take it over, then we can look at finding solutions to resolve the hydro projects as well, keeping in mind the economic viability of these projects”.
As many as 20 under construction hydro power projects totalling 6,329 MW are either stalled or stressed in the country and Rs 30,147.08 crore has already been spent on them.
The government has however, not made any clear statement or elaborated on how it plans to resolve these bad loans.
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