NEW DELHI: Government today expressed hope that it may auction four ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) in the next fiscal.
“Hopefully in next fiscal (FY17) we may auction three to four UMPPs,” Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal told reporters here.
He was speaking on the sidelines of 8th Global CSR Summit- cum-Responsible Organisation Excellence Awards organised by Assocham.
“Over the year, I have been calibrating the requirement of power and can forsee that we will need these UMPPs into place. So even though we made announcements last year, it did not make prudent business sense to rush it, so we sat. We made the documents, which are very robust… that should be going to the Cabinet soon and once it approves the new document we will start bidding,” Goyal said.
The minister in January had said the government will auction three ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) by March, including Tilaiya and Cheyyur entailing investments of Rs 80,000 crore.
The investment for an UMPP of 4,000 MW has been revised from Rs 20,000 crore to about Rs 27,000 crore each recently on basis of rise in the price of coal and land.
Power Secretary P K Pujari in March had said the government may not be able to float tenders for three ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) entailing an investment of Rs 90,000 crore by March-end due to some legal glitch.
In last year’s budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had proposed to set up five new UMPPs of 4,000 MW each in the plug-and-play mode.