NEWS & UPDATES

Weekly Power Sector Round up: 26th October 2019

India to spend $1.4 trillion on infrastructure in the next 5 years: Finance Minister

Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, while addressing the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that India plans to spend USD 1.4 trillion on its infrastructure in the following five years.

She said that a task force has been constituted in the finance ministry to draw up a national infrastructure pipeline.


Rs. 1 lakh crore bad loans debilitating India’s power sector: TERI

18% of the total outstanding debt, worth Rs. 1 lakh crore, has gone bad, according to The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

“The causes of these stranded assets were the imprudent capacity expansion that occurred in the period 2010-15; demand growth slowdown after 2012; and upstream (coal linkages) and downstream (Power purchase agreement tie-ups) challenges in the power sector value chain,” said a research paper authored by TERI fellow Thomas Spencer.

The Aggregate & Commercial (AT&C) losses in the Power sector also remain very high compared to other nations at 18.7%.


Electric 2-wheeler sales crash under FAME-II

Policy changes in the FAME initiative have led to electric two-wheeler sales crash by 94% in the first 6 months of FY20. Only about 3000 units were sold through FAME II (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles) from April to September 2019, down from 48,671 units during the same period last year.

These policy changes included bringing the subsidy down and excluding low cost electric scooters from the program. The subsidy is now only available on two wheelers with a speed of 40km/hr and a range of 80km on one charge.