Centre Biased Against Ap Power Schemes: Naidu

Naidu attacked the Centres stand on the question of providing counter-guarantee to the 1,000 mw thermal project by the Hindujas at Visakhapatnam and its attitude towards the state electricity board.

The chief minister, who arrived here yesterday morning after attending the conference on power in the capital on Wednesday, said he would soon seek a special meeting to sort out the problems.

The chief minister was critical of the Centres move in clearing the counter-guarantee to the Cogentrix project and delaying the same to the Hinduja project.

I want the Hinduja project to be treated on the same lines as the Cogentrix project and the guarantee signed. In fact, our scheme is more transparent than that, he said.

 

Naidu said setting up washeries by the coalfields to which the Hinduja project has been linked is one issue delaying the project.

Asked if the Hindujas could not be persuaded to develop one of the coal reserves within Andhra Pradesh as a long-term measure while making ad hoc arrangement for coal supplies to their plant till such time, Naidu said he had other ideas for the coal reserves within the state. We want the coal for the other projects we are planning, he said.

He also wanted a long-term policy on liquid fuel/naphta for power projects and said Wednesdays meeting at Delhi tackled this issue.

The Centre should not be shifting its policies on fuel, jeopardising the states plans, he said.

We invited global bids and finalised projects based on naptha. Now the Centre says it wants to ban the use of naptha for power generation. How can this happen?, he asked.

He alleged that the Centre was creating problems in the way of the Urea project planned by the R P Goenka group at Visakhapatnam.

The land has been handed over and the foundation stone for the multi-crore project laid. But the Centre is creating problems on the supply of naptha at concessional rates. I have taken up the issue with the minister for chemicals and fertilisers, he said.

Naidu read out from a document of the Union energy ministry and said even though the Andhra Pradesh state electricity board excelled all other boards and even the National Thermal Power Corporation in all parameters of power generation, its rate of return has been shown as -28.50 per cent against the statutorily stipulated 3 per cent for all SEBs.

He explained that the APSEB went into bad days and incurred a loss of Rs 856.86 crore for the first time in 1994-95 due to the omissions and commissions of his predecessors in office.

I have been monitoring the APSEB on a daily basis for the last one year. I have brought about an improvement in all parameters of its working, he said.

To ensure the statutory 3 per cent return to the board, the government had written off its loan of Rs 944.11 crore, which was earlier converted into the equity of the board.

The Centre has not accepted this and shows our return as - 28.50 per cent, he lamented and said this position was not acceptable to the state.

Asked how he proposed to overcome this problem, Naidu said he had tried his best to improve the fiscal status of the SEB, including a hike in power rates.

Naidu said a positive return was crucial since the state was seeking assistance from international institutions for its developmental activities. I am going again to Delhi to hold discussions with the World Bank president, he mentioned.

The Chief Minister lamented that Andhra Pradesh has been put at the bottom of all the states in the country in terms of growth and said hard decisions were required to move it up.

The results of the recent elections vindicated the support of the masses to the taxation and subsidy cut policies of his government. Now, I shall charter a development course for the state, fixing accountability at every decision-making level and monitoring the functioning of every department through an administration-net, he said.