New Delhi: A staggering 3 lakh crore of investment in a dozen power plants of the private sector is at risk of turning into NPA as states buying power have not been making payments for months, official data and sources said.
According to data available on the PRAAPTI portal of the Ministry of Power, 12 power generating companies belonging to firms such as GMR and the Adani Group and public sector generators like NTPC had about Rs 41,730 crore in outstanding dues from state distribution compa-nies as of December 2018. Dues as on date run into an estimated Rs 60,000 crore, half of it being towards independent producers in power sector.
The BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh has the most outstanding dues of Rs 6,497 crore, followed by Maharashtra at Rs 6,179 crore. Other states which are not paying power generating companies on time include Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab.
According to PRAAPTI portal, Uttar Pradesh takes 544 days to clear its dues while Maharashtra takes 580 days. More than 80 per cent of the outstanding is accounted for by India’s most industrialised states such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu which are biggest consumers of electricity. The top-10 states take an average of 562 days to make payments.
Bajaj Group-owned Lalitput Power Generation Company Ltd reportedly is unable to clear salaries of nearly 3,000 staff because of pending dues of over Rs 2,185 crore from discoms of Uttar Pradesh. So acute is the situation that the company is unable to maintain requisite coal stocks. Sources said the delay in payment is posing severe working capital issues at the private power plants.
Delay in realisation of receivables from the state distribution companies weakens the ability of project developers to service debt in a timely manner and leads to exhaustion of working capital in some cases, they said, adding delayed payments risk projects being termed non-performing assets (NPAs) under the new RBI classification rules.
