Bhel lines up $2.5 bn investment in next 4 years

Power equipment major Bhel today announced an investment of $2.5 billion (over Rs 10,000 crore) in the next four years to ramp up capacity to meeting the growing electricity needs.     

"We will be investing Rs 5,000 crore in the first phase till December 2009 to reach 15,000 Mw capacity. Besides, the Board has also approved an investment of similar amount to take the capacity to 20,000 Mw by 2012," Bhel CMD K Ravi Kumar told PTI.     

The investment is in line with the order book of the company, which has crossed the 1,00,000 mark and is still growing.     

On the issue of delay on part of Bhel to supply the equipments, Ravi said, Bhel was not responsible for it as most of the projects which have been facing time overrun are due to changes in the parameters.     
"Any change in the parameters requires a complete redesigning of the project and that causes delay sometimes," he said.     

On the overseas expansion, the company is looking for acquisitions and is likely to appoint global consultants to advise them. Earlier Bhel had set aside Rs 10,000 crore for overseas expansion and were scouting for companies on its own.     

Bhel had earlier formed a separate unit for the same but the company did not take off, "Our model was perhaps not right, we should have a global consultant to advice us," Kumar said.