One good decision by centre, Gujarat saves Rs. 400 crore in 21 days

Gandhinagar, 11 November 2014

Power Minister of Gujarat Shri Saurabh Patel today while speaking in the assembly said that with a new agreement with the central government run power companies, Gujarat state has saved around Rs. 400 crore in just 21 days.

He said most of the power companies in India are supplied coal by central government run Coal India Limited. At the same time, as per the central government directive, each power company has to import 10-15% coal of its total need from abroad.

Coal imported by NTPC lands at Gujarat’s Mundra port and transported to power station located far away in Chhattisgarh state. At the same time the state of Gujarat was provided coal from Koria Rewa coal field which is located 1300 km away.

If coal imported by NTPC is supplied to Gujarat, and in exchange, coal supplied to Gujarat is supplied to NTPc, both can save huge amount of money spent on transportation.

The idea was first proposed by Gujarat government to centre during UPA-2, but even after repeated proposals and reminders, centre was not moving positively.

After change of power in centre, Shri Narendra Modi led govt quickly took decision and approved the proposal.

In just 21 days after the agreement was signed on 30 September, Gujarat received NTPC coal’s first rack on 21 October and NTPC received first rake of Koria-Rewa coal field on 27 October. With exchange of 10 lakh mt coal, Gujarat will save Rs. 140 crore. When entire 25 lakh mt coal stock will be exchanged, Gujarat will save Rs. 400 crore while centre will save Rs. 545 crore. Thus total Rs. 945 crore will be saved, benefit of which will be passed to consumers.