Panel suggestions on fresh bidding norms for UMPP by March-end

An expert panel set up for suggesting revised bidding norms for ultra mega power projects will submit its report to the government by this month-end.

The panel which has met a couple of times for deliberations on the standard bidding documents (SBD) for ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) will finalise the report and submit it to the Ministry of Power by March-end, according to sources. The ministry will send the report for the consideration of the Cabinet thereafter. UMPP is a coal-based power project with 4,000 MW generation capacity. 

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Budget 2015-16 had said five more UMPPs, under the plug and play model would be set up with total investments of Rs 1 lakh crore. This panel, headed by former Central Vigilance Commission chief Pratuysh Sinha, was set up by the government after it received tepid response from the private sector for the two proposed plants in Odisha and Tamil Nadu. Bankers had also raised funding issues.

Adani Power, CLP India, Jindal Steel & Power, JSW Energy, Sterlite Energy and Tata Power participated in the first round of bidding for the Tamil Nadu project. Of these, four bought the Request For Proposal (RFP) document but decided not to go ahead further in the process. The Odisha UMPP saw nine interested bidders, including Adani Power, CLP India, GMR Energy, Jindal Steel and Power, JSW Energy and Sterlite Energy. After the private companies pulled out, only NTPC and NHPC were left for bidding. Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal had said, “Unfortunately we did not get enough bids, we have had to scrap the process, its a process which was initiated before this government came in. I thought it was not prudent to keep extending the date without any possible solution.” In order to avoid such situation in the future, the government appointed the panel, which will come up with the revised bidding norms for the UMPPs.

So far, four such projects have been awarded of which Reliance Power has bagged three -- Sasan (Madhya Pradesh), Krishnapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Tilaiya (Jharkhand). Tata Power was awarded the Mundra UMPP in Gujarat.