Powergrid sell off

Ministry moots NTPC, PowerGrid sell-off Balaji C. Mouli NEW DELHI, May 30 THE Power Ministry has mooted sell-off of equity in National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL). At a meeting chaired today by the Union Power Minister, Mr. P.R. Kumaramangalam, consultants ICICI were asked to prepare, in a month's time, a road map for the sell-off. The Ministry also laid down the broad structure under which the restructuring plan is to be conceived. It has gone along with ICICI on the idea of dividing PGCIL into five regional companies and on divestment in the regional entities. In the case of NTPC, the Ministry has asked ICICI to do a station-wise sensitivity study of the NTPC stations with the objective of selling off the controlling equity in the recently set up stations where there is a possibility of capacity expansion. In the case of National Hydro-electric Power Corporation (NHPC), the Ministry has not recommended any divestment. It has backed the joint venture route for hydel capacity addition. In the case of the large-capacity Dehang and Subansiri hydel projects in Arunachal Pradesh, the Ministry has mooted a cess on power to fund the undertakings. The Government plans to set up a special purpose vehicle to set up and manage the hydel projects . The Ministry has been under pressure from the Department of Disinvestment to appoint a consultant with a mandate to suggest restructuring of NTPC. In fact, during the last meeting of the Committee of Secretaries on disinvestment, the Power Ministry gave an undertaking to complete the consultant's study in a time-frame of six months. Today's development is seen as a step in that direction. The Ministry had earlier asked the power utilities to hire consultants, namely ICICI and SBI Caps, for studying various aspects of the sector. In the case of ICICI, the mandate was to study the demand-supply situation and the resource mobilisation measur es required to meet power on demand by 2012. In the case of SBI Caps, the objective was to study the Central PSUs.

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