By IANS,
Kolkata : Energy major CESC posted a marginal increase in net profit at Rs.126 crore for the quarter ended Sep 30 against Rs.124 crore in the corresponding quarter a year ago, a top company official said here Thursday.
“We had to import lot of expensive power during the quarter than we did before,” Sanjiv Goenka, company’s vice chairman told reporters here. Describing the quarter performance as decent, he said the power plants were working at 98.6 percent across all stations.
CESC, the flagship company of diversified RPG Entreprises, is the sole distributor of electricity within an area of 567 sq kilometre of the city and adjoining Howrah. It owns and operates four thermal power plants generating 975 MW of power.
These power plants are: Budge Budge Generating Station (500 MW), Southern Generating Station (135 MW), Titagarh Generating Station (240 MW) and New Cossipore Generating Station (100 MW).
The company is expecting to finish the financial closure for the Dhariwal power project within the next seven to ten days, Goenka added. CESC has acquired a little more than 50 percent in Dhariwal Infrastructure to set up a 600-MW thermal power project at Chandrapur in Maharashtra.
The project cost is around Rs.2,850 crore and will be funded in a debt equity ratio of 70:30. He said the Maharashtra project will come up before the Haldia project, which is yet to get the last tract of its allotted 400 acres, he added.
Goenka is hopeful that the financial closure of the Budge Budge project will be done by the year-end. The third unit (250 MW) in Budge Budge is being constructed at a cost of Rs.1,200-crore. The Budge Budge power station currently has two units of 250 MW each.
The company has been short-listed for the Patna circle, he said.
“We are one of the three parties shortlisted for the Patna circle but has decided to go to court for the admissibility of a bidder which has emerged as the highest bidder as we doubt their credential,” Goenka said.
The company is also looking for acquiring existing power generating units in the range of 300-600 MW capacity, he said as a part of its expansion plans.
The recent coal price hike by Coal India of around 15 percent has hit the power utility hard though Goenka refused to quantify the financial impact.
“We have started looking at acquiring coal mines in South Africa and Australia to bring down our coal cost,” Goenka said. The company’s plans to acquire coal blocks in Indonesia have not made any progress till now.
“We looked at six coal mines there but in every mine we found out the actual coal reserve was a mere fraction of the stated reserve,” the vice chairman added.