The Power Ministry is considering setting up of a Rs 50,000 crore fund for financing projects and may rope in state-run lenders Power Finance Corporation and Rural Electrification Corporation for the same. "The concept is being thought about to create a debt fund. It is shaping up. The corpus would be about Rs 50,000 crore," a top Power Ministry official said. The proposal for setting up the debt fund is at a nascent stage and the ministry is yet to work out the final modalities. It is also in constant dialogue with the Planning Commission for working out a blueprint of the proposed fund. "We are looking at where the money could be raised from, which project would be there we are in talks with the Planning Commission for the debt fund," the official said, without revealing the Plan panel's view on the subject.
On being asked about the role of Power Finance Corporation and Rural Electrification Corporation, he said they could get associated with it. The proposed fund is expected to finance the various power generation, transmission and distribution projects and also refinance those projects i.e. providing funds to the smaller lending institutions or the companies for funding the projects.
India in the next 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17) targets to add over 1,00,000 MW of power generation capacity, which require an estimated investment of Rs 4 lakh crore. An expenditure of about Rs 4 crore is incurred on generating one megawatt of electricity.
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