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The power sector has been left wanting for more as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has not met most of their demands in his Budget.
The only respite has been the announcement of setting up of five ultra mega power projects through competitive bidding. The projects will have all statutory clearances and land acquired before they are bid out.
Power projects “Five more ultra mega power projects (UMPPs), under the plug-and-play model will be set up with total investments of ₹1 lakh crore,” Jaitley said.
Ultra mega power projects have a minimum size of 4,000 MW and are bid out by the Power Finance Corporation. Till now, four UMPPs have been awarded, of which Sasan (Madhya Pradesh), Krishnapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Tilaiya (Jharkhand) have been bagged by Reliance Power.
While the power sector had asked for scrapping of customs duty on imported coal, what it got was a doubling of the clean energy cess on coal to ₹200 per tonne.
Small price to pay This would lead to a hike in power tariffs.
“A ₹100 increase in the cost of coal impacts power tariffs by 6 paise a unit. This country is ready to pay that very small price to keep the environment clean for our future generations,” said Piyush Goyal, Minister for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy.
The power sector’s demands to remove the customs duty on naptha and reduce the minimum alternate tax were also not met.
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