The Hindu : Rs 6,000-cr project for electrification of villages

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 19, 2003

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Other States - Gujarat

Rs 6,000-cr project for electrification of villages

Ahmedabad Sept. 18. Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) has decided to implement a Rs 6,000-crore project for electrification of one crore households in one lakh villages over four years.

Briefing newspersons about the ambitious project here today, REC Executive Director Abhay Misra said the corporation would partly fund the scheme by ploughing back its profits for four years.

As against 5.87 lakh villages in the country, there were only 74,000 villages electricity and 11 lakh power pumpsets when REC was constituted in 1969. In 2003, the figures have gone up to 5.03 lakh villages and 1.34 crore pumpsets. Over 60 per cent of the villages and pumpsets energised have been funded by REC.

However, he said, the definition of `electrification' of villages is proposed to be changed from minimum one light or pump connection in a village to 10 per cent of the total households from the next year.

The ten states that have achieved 100 per cent electrification are Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Haryana, Maharashtra, Sikkim, Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Nagaland. The six states close to the target are Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh and Manipur.

REC is a non-banking finance company, wholly-owned by the Union Government with an assets base of Rs 15,900 crores and net worth of Rs 2,860 crores as on March 31, 2003. Its profit before tax in the last fiscal was Rs 767 crores and profit after tax Rs 507 crores.

Mr Misra said that REC has reduced budgetary support from 8 per cent in 2000-01 to zero per cent by 2002-03 and he exuded confidence that it would repay all government loans and become a zero debt company by March 2004.

Last April, it was awarded by the President for being one of the top ten Performing Public Sector Undertakings in the country.

He said the corporation had mobilised Rs 4,415 crores from the market in 2002-03. This year, it proposed to raise Rs 5,500 crores, including Rs 4,500 crores from 54 EC Capital Gan Tax Exemption Bonds, awarded the highest `AAA' rating by Crisil. -- UNI

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