4 UMPPs likely to be auctioned in upcoming fiscal: Goyal

The government hopes to auction four ultra mega power projects (UMPPs), defined as those with above 4000 MW capacacity, in the next fiscal, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.

"Hopefully in next fiscal we may auction three to four UMPPs," he told reporters here on the sidelines of industry chamber Assocham-organised 8th Global CSR Summit-cum-Responsible Organisation Excellence Awards.

"We made the documents, which are very robust, that should be going to the cabinet soon, and once it approves the new document, we will start bidding.

"Over the year, I have been calibrating the requirement of power and can forsee that we will need these UMPPs into place. So even though we made announcements last year, it did not make prudent business sense to rush it, so we sat," added Goyal.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech for the current fiscal ending Thursday, had proposed to set up five new UMPPs of 4,000 MW each in the plug-and-play mode.

Goyal also told the gathering on Thursday that large corporates in India should recuse themselves from award ceremonies and instead encourage smaller companies and people who really need to be encouraged.