Underpowered reforms

Populistic pricing is holding back power sector's recovery

India’s chronically troubled power sector remains a potent symbol of the economic slowdown, with poor demand and the snail’s pace of reform contributing to the pile-up of bad loans in the banking sector. Currently, power projects worth 25,000 Mw are up for sale by private sector companies that are looking to reduce their debt burden. The point to note is that all these are commissioned units, yet buyers are hard to come by. Buyers who have shown interest demand steep write-offs of over 60 per cent of the book value. The reluctance to load their balance sheets even with operational