TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The Goa Cabinet on Wednesday decided that the state would continue to purchase power from Reliance Infrastructure Ltd even as it asked it to change over to LPG till the end of the agreement period in 2014.
The power purchase agreement signed with RIL in 1997 ends in August 2014. However, the government has not ruled out any further continuation of the agreement. The proposal placed before the cabinet also states that government would provide budgetary support to meet the expenditure to the extent not allowed by JERC.
“The difference is hardly 96 paise per unit, which is negligible,” said Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar rationalized, also arguing that a cancellation could affect the power scenario in the state as RIL sells power to 73 units, plus what the government had committed including MPT. The state purchases around 96 lakh units from RIL every month – 19.8 MW against its generating capacity of 48 MW.
Parrikar said the government was in the process of finalizing coal block project, most probably by July.
