Ajay Singh Mehrotra, Vice President, EPC Power Division, Gammon India
In the power sector, 2012 has been a very bad year with zero projects commenced. Unfortunately all the ingredients of the sector have gone wrong. Coal, environÂmental clearances and land became a huge problem for any power project. So whatever projects were on the anvil have also got delayed or shelved.
What went right in 2012
What I feel is the matter could get escalated to the prime ministers level, the Prime Minister got himself involved in it. He ordered FSIÂ’s to be signed however; it has not taken place yet.
Drag factors
The sector was absolutely devoid of resources. There is no coal. There are problems in tariff. There were cases where environment clearance was provided and later withdrawn. As a result, the companies which already had orders were put on hold.
But all these can be controlled. In environment clearance, there has to be somebody who can look in each case. Today, there are initiatives by the Maharashtra and central government. There are a number of agencies involved, sometimes the ministry collector or politicians are involved, so there is no single window. Similarly, coal is controllable.
The very fact that Coal India does not have the capacity, they can always go for imports. Let there be a policy for imports.Coal India has been talking of importing coal and tariff to be a nationwide tariff with a mix of imported coal and indigenous coal so nobody takes the burden of the entire export or imported coal or the domestic coal. That policy decision has to come. That would ease the situation that coal India can import and give.
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