NHPC's Subansiri project sees over Rs 1,000 cr cost overrun

Faced with prolonged delays, state-run NHPC has witnessed cost overrun of more than Rs 1,000 crore for its 2,000 MW Subansiri project.

 

The country's largest hydro power producer now expects the completion of the stalled project to cost around Rs 10,780 crore.

 

Subansiri Lower project is located on the border of Assam and Aruncachal Pradesh.

 

NHPC Director (Finance) A B L Srivastava said the work of the project was stopped in December 2011, due to agitation by "anti-dam activists".

 

"Subansiri project having a capacity of 2,000 MW has already witnessed cost overruns of more than Rs 1,000 crore... When the project began, the cost envisaged was about Rs 6,300 crore and we have already invested around Rs 6,000 crore.

 

"Now presently, anticipated cost of completion is approximately Rs 10,780 crore," he told PTI.

 

NHPC has an installed generation capacity of 5,702 MW.

 

In the current fiscal, the company's construction budget is Rs 3,450 crore, out of which Rs 1,831 crore has been planned under debt funding.

 

Meanwhile, Srivastava said the company has not seen many projects getting started as expected earlier.

 

"Since the IPO stage in September 2009 till the end of March 2013, we were expecting to add more than 4,000 MW of generation capacity.

 

"However, during this period, we have managed to add only about 527 MW," he noted.

 

The projects, together having 527 MW generation capacity, are Sewa II (120 MW), Chamera-III (231 MW), Chutak (44 MW) and TLDP-III (132 MW).

 

In response to a query on the impact of foreign exchange rate fluctuations, Srivastava said it would not be much since most of the company's borrowings are in Indian rupee.

 

"At the end of March 2013, NHPC's foreign borrowings accounted for just about 13% of the total borrowings. The overseas borrowings is from Japanese yen loans," he added.

 

The project was earlier planned to be completed by December 2012.