State-run NHPC, the country’s largest hydro power producer, is planning to raise about ₹5,500 crore via corporate bonds.

Of this, ₹494 crore will be raised by issuing ‘W’ series corporate bonds on private placement basis. This issue is a part of the ₹4,500-crore issue approved by the shareholders at the Annual General Meeting held in September 2016.

NHPC’s board meeting, scheduled on July 27, will consider the proposal for raising funds via corporate bonds.

The meeting will also consider another corporate bond issuance of ₹5,000 crore, the company said in a stock exchange filing. However, this has to be approved by shareholders through special resolution at the next AGM, the date of which is yet to be disclosed.

An email to NHPC requesting comments on how the funds could be used did not elicit immediate response.

NHPC has recently secured power off-take from seven hydro power stations in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir by signing Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) with Delhi-based distribution company BSES Rajdhani Power, run by Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Infrastructure. The PPA was signed on July 14, the company said in a separate filing.

The total capacity of all seven power stations, for which the 35-year-long PPA was signed, is around 2,400MW. NHPC owns 20 hydro power projects with a total installed capacity of 6,507MW, contributing around 15 per cent to India’s total installed hydro power capacity of 44,478MW. The company has three under-construction projects with a total capacity of 3,130MW.

In its February note, Care Ratings said the poor financial health of many of the State discoms continue to remain a cause of concern for power-generating companies including NHPC. However, the company has been regularly recovering money from the beneficiaries. Care noted that NHPC enjoyed healthy operational efficiency of its power stations, with most of them registering higher Plant Availability Factor than the normative one prescribed by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission.

In the previous financial year, NHPC achieved a generation of 23,275 million units (MU), slightly lower than the target of 23,500 MU set in the MoU with the Power Ministry. In the new MoU signed last month for the current financial year, the generation target has been set at 24000 MU and revenue from operations target at ₹7,350 crore. NHPC’s revenue from operations in FY17 stood at ₹7,191 crore, down 1.5 per cent from FY16.

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