STATE POWER MINISTERS' CONFERENCE
ON JUNE 12
A one-day Conference
of State Power Ministers will be held at New Delhi on June 12,
2003. The issues for discussion at the Conference, organised by
Ministry of Power, are Capacity Addition, Rural Electrification
and Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (APDRP).
Power Ministers, Secretaries, Chairmen of SEBs of various States
and UTs are expected to participate in the Conference.
A Conference of State
Power Ministers was held in May, 2002 to accelerate the rural
electrification in States having a backlog of villages to be electrified.
With the combined efforts of the Ministry of Power and the State
Governments the programme or rural electrification has been accelerated.
For the first time in the last five years, more than 5000 villages
were electrified in a single year. However, keeping in view the
challenge of electrifying the balance 70135 villages and for providing
electricity for the de-electrified villages, there is an urgent
need to accord priority to rural electrification programme both
by the Government of India and the State governments. Central
Electricity Authority has estimated the need for creating additional
capacity of 1,00,000 MW by the year 2012. A capacity addition
of 41,110 MW comprising 14,393 MW hydro, 25,417 MW thermal and
1,300 MW nuclear power has been fixed for the Tenth Five Year
Plan. An additional capacity of 3,100 MW is expected to come from
renewable sources of energy. The contribution of State sector
and private sector during Tenth Plan has been fixed at 11,157
MW and 7,121 MW respectively which is approximately 45 per cent
of total capacity addition envisaged.
The APDRP has been
fine tuned to incentivise the process of reforms in electricity
distribution. The success of this programme would strengthen the
State Electricity Boards (SEBs)/Utilities which would result in
improving the financial condition of the State. The Ministry of
Power has approved projects worth Rs.15,641.71 crore under APDRP
and released Rs.1,755.51 crore in 2002-03. The successful implementation
of the programme would lead to technological and organisational
changes and improved sub transmission and distribution network
resulting in reducing technical and commercial (AT&C) losses,
improving reliability and quality of power and increasing the
net power availability to the consumers.
The success of the
reform strategy is predicated upon the States evolving a viable
Business Plan for achieving commercial viability by the end of
the Tenth Plan. An amount of Rs.379.27 crore has been released
during the year 2002-03 as incentive to the States of Maharashtra,
Gujarat and Haryana for reducing cash losses as a result of these
efforts.
