Power Grid to issue bonds by this fiscal end

State-run power transmission utility, Power Grid Corporation of India (PGCIL), is contemplating issuing bonds in the domestic market by the end of the current financial year, to part finance its Rs 55,000-crore expansion plans envisaged to be completed during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007-12), said its chairman and managing director Sudhir Kumar Chaturvedi.

“We have already tied up around 76 per cent of the capital, and intend to raise the remaining through issuance of bonds and internal mechanism. The amount to be raised through the bond issue is still being worked out,” he said.

Chaturvedi was speaking to mediapersons after laying the foundation stone for the Power Grid’s Rs 32-crore office and residential complex of the southern region, scheduled to be completed within the next 18 months, in Hyderabad on Sunday.

PGCIL, Chaturvedi said, will be investing about Rs 5,000 crore for evacuating power from the 4,000-Mw Krishnapatnam ultra mega power project (UMPP) and other generation projects, while an equal amount will be infused into laying transmission systems for independent power producer (IPP) projects in the state. “The Krishnapatnam UMPP will be commissioned by 2013-14,” he added.

“In Andhra Pradesh, we have received about nine applications for access to the inter-state transmission system. We have already cleared five IPP applications for long-term open access while the balance will be issued in September 2009,” Chaturvedi said.

To a query on PGCIL’s optical fibre lines, he said the company had already laid 20,000-kilometre fibre lines, connecting 60 cities across the country. “We are currently having discussions with the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). They have agreed to pool our resources to fibre-connect far-flung states like Jammu and Kashmir, and Chattisgarh,” he added.