NTPC-Bhel JV's CEO to be announced by July

"For finalising the CEO of the company, a high level search committee of six members headed by the secretary, Heavy Industries has already been set up which will submit its findings by 31 July" said Jairam Ramesh, minister of state for power.

The minister was inaugurating the office of the 50:50 joint venture company of the two power sector giants set up to primarily undertake power equipment manufacturing.

"The JV company has been set up to undertake three important tasks- equipment manufacturing, taking up engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts and to make balance of plant (BoP) equipments like ash-handling plants" said Ramesh.

The MoU for the joint venture was signed by the two companies in September last year and the company was formally incorporated in April 2008.

The minister informed that the draft of the company's business plan is being worked out currently and will be finalised in June.

Two project sites - one in Bamnauli in Delhi and the other in Vaishali in Bihar - have already been identified for locating the manufacturing units. The Bamnauli plant will have a manufacturing capacity of 750 Mw and the Vaishali plant will have a capacity of 500 Mw. The company is now planning to set up an overseas manufacturing base also.

NTPC-Bhel power projects Ltd will have a total equipment manufacturing capacity of 4,000 Mw per annum which will be commissioned in the next 4-5years. Both the companies together plan to invest Rs 5,000 crore in the venture over a period of five years.

Bhel already has a manufacturing capacity of 10,000 Mw and is in the process of increasing it to 15,000 Mw by 2012. It has bagged 48 per cent of the equipment orders for the 11,061 Mw capacity addition planned in 2008-09 . The company is now planning to set up in-house fabrication units in a bid to reduce transportation costs of the equipments.

"Rise in fuel prices has lead us to plan fabrication units for equipments like duct columns at project sites only" said Ravi Kumar, chairman and managing director, Bhel.

The stocks of Bhel at the Bombay Stock Exchange closed today at Rs 1,444.80 today, down 1.80 percent from the previous day's close. NTPC's stocks closed higher 5.57 percent at 166.65.