'India needs to sweat existing power infrastructure'

India needs to utilise fully existing power assets and revive stranded energy projects before making new investment, a senior official of Srei Infrastructure said today.
"The power sector has huge surplus capacity, you need to sweat that asset ... It's heavily under-utilised. Projects are stuck. You need to eliminate that, remove the bottlenecks," Srei Infrastructure Finance Vice chairman Sunil Kanoria said at the Economist India Summit 2017 here.
He added that the plant load factor (capacity utilisation) of all power facilities in the country is very low and there is a need to get it up to 85-90 per cent.

Speaking at the session on India's infrastructure needs, Kanoria said planning for infrastructure also needs to be long term.
"India can't afford unutilised assets, whatever be the reason, whoever may be at fault... India can't waste money on setting up further generation unless we spend what we have created... It's all public money," he said.
Srei Infrastructure Finance is one of India's largest infrastructure institutions. It has a customer base of over 77,000 and over USD 5.5 billion of consolidated assets under management.