The power sector has attracted investments worth INR 20 lakh crore during the last 9 years and is poised to grow even further with investments worth INR 17 lakh crore in the next 5-7 years.

Mar 08, 2024

The Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy Mr. R. K. Singh has urged the Indian manufacturing industry to seize the challenge of being able to compete globally, to make in India not only for India but for the world. Mr. Singh said that the Indian industry needs to look around to compete in external markets and be able to export. “There is no country which can be fully self-sufficient; every country needs to import something, for which you need to be able to sell to that country, which in turn needs quality, finishing and product improvement. This is what the industry did not do in the era of licensing.”

The Minister said to the industry representatives that the quality of their products needs to be so good that they can compete globally and that their prices need to be reasonable. Mr. Singh said, “The world is looking at China plus one, we want to be that one.”

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As per Mr. Singh, there has been a significant increase in the investments made in the power sector during the last ~9 years summing up to approximately INR 20 lakh crore. Furthermore, investments worth INR 17 lakh crore are expected in the next 5-7 years.

Reflecting on challenges faced historically by the manufacturing sector, the Minister said that there has never been a dearth of demand, but that the pace of growth brought in by the government has multiplied the demand manifold.

He added, “In the last ~10 years, we have added 190 GW of power generation capacity, increasing it to around 436 GW, nearly doubling it. This required a lot of thermal and renewable equipment. We added 200,000 circuit kilometres to transmission lines; our transmission system today is the largest integrated transmission system in the world. We can transfer 116 GW from one corner of the country to another. During my tenure, we spent about INR 2 lakh crore in constructing about 3,000 new substations, upgrading about 4,000 substations, adding 8.5 lakh circuit kilometres of HT and LT lines and 7.5 lakh transformers.”

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The Power Minister said that the expansion is going on and that we need to double the size by 2030, given the quantum of power we need. “The power demand grew by 60 percent from 2013-14, it grew by 9 percent last year, but we were able to meet it due to the expansion and upgradation in infrastructure we did. We are adding about 85 GW of thermal capacity, we have 14 GW hydro under construction and another 14 – 15 GW of hydro capacity under clearances.”