Power Finance Corporation Ltd. (PFC), organized a conference of Western Region State Utilities for Power & Infrastructure Sector on “Challenges & Opportunities in Power Sector and PFC’s Role under the Changing Scenario” from 07-10 April 2023 at Coorg, Karnataka.
The conference was attended by Shri R S Dhillon, CMD, PFC, Shri R R Jha, Director (Projects), PFC, Smt. Simmi R Nakra, CVO, PFC, Senior officials of PFC & Principal Secretary (Energy), Head of utilities and Senior officials of the state sector power utilities from the States of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Goa and utilities like MahaPreit.
During the conference, PFC shared the challenges currently being faced by Power Sector along with the new opportunities thrown up to state power utilities and how PFC is ready to support the utilities to turn these opportunities into successful results for marked improvement in Power Sector.
PFC briefed about the various policies formulated to meet the requirement of state utilities for meeting the challenges in the emerging scenario. The delegates were informed about the product portfolio, appraisal mechanism, disbursement procedures and monitoring mechanism of PFC. It was shared that as per the revised mandate by GoI, PFC is now funding projects in Logistic & non-power Infrastructure Sector also such as metro, petrochemical refineries, sea ports, road & healthcare infrastructure, electric mobility space as well as irrigation and drinking water projects.
A range of issues covering inter-alia mounting dues of Gencos, Transcos, Trading companies & high ARR-ACS gap for DISCOMs and Govt. of India initiatives in terms of Late Payment Surcharge (LPS) Scheme and Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) to tackle these issues were deliberated in detail during the conference. The expectations from utilities on aspects related to Integrated Rating Categorization and Corporate Governance were also emphasized upon.
The senior officials of state utilities shared their valuable feedback and expectations from PFC in meeting the challenges being faced by utilities. The officials also expressed their gratitude to PFC for providing a platform for exchanging experiences & concerns at the highest level.