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Goa aims to de-privatise power, cut losses

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Panaji

Goa has worked out a system to de-privatise the power purchase.

Five years ago, power was among the few profit-making departments. But after signing a power purchase agreement (PPA) for a mini private power project with the Reliance Salgaoncar Power Company Ltd (RSPCL), the department is now incurring huge loses.

In order to bring the situation under control, the Goa government has now decided to buy 20 MW instead of the earlier 40 MW from RSPCL. As compensation, the state government has agreed to grant sales tax exemption to RSPCL, which is presently supplying little over 38 MW to the state authorities at the rate of Rs 4.50 per unit.

The agreement, which comes into effect from June 2001, will continue till December 2003.

Under the PPA, RSPCL is paid Rs 1.50 billion for hardly 40 MW, while the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) is paid only Rs 340 million for around 200 MW.

Claiming it to be a 'win-win situation', Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar said the net gain of the new agreement would ultimately come to Rs 530 million annually after exempting sales tax on purchase of naphtha.

Blaming his Congress predecessors for this mess, Parrikar asserted that the department would start making profit once again by next year.

It may be mentioned that Goa, which is allotted 408 MW from the NTPC (the tiny state has no self-generating system), has a drawing capacity of hardly 250 MW. To counter this the state is planning a 60 MW sub-station at Colvale in North Goa, which will draw from the Maharashtra grid. But the high court is yet to lift the ban it had imposed on new power connections due to acute power shortage.

Though Goa's present peak load of uninterrupted requirement is only 250 MW, the NTPC power would not be enough to develop the state industrially.

"We expect at least 100 MW more from our captive power policy", said Parrikar. While allowing private captive power plants to sell its power directly, the state is also planning the unique power banking system by March, which would allow the private plants to deposit its excess power in the state-run bank on paper and buy it whenever required. However, generating and selling captive power directly would be at the discretion of the private generators.

While Parrikar is firm on not signing any PPA with private power generation plants, he has assured the people that there will be no hike in the power tariff till March 2004.

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