NEW DELHI, July 28: The Delhi government has `held back' its earlier decision to award the contract of the prestigious Bawana Phase-I power project to Reliance Industries and is considering several other companies for the project. The decision has been taken `in view of the high prices quoted by Reliance'.Lieutenant Governor Vijai Kapoor told Express Newsline : ``We have held back the tender submitted by Reliance for the first phase of the Bawana project. Three years ago, they qualified as developers. Since they had quoted high prices, we were trying to renegotiate with them, asking them to bring down the prices to the level of their Patalganga project in Maharashtra.''
Reliance had been selected as developer for the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) Bawana Phase-I project three years ago to generate 421 Mega Watt (MW) of power. Reliance, had quoted Rs 3.96 crore per Mega Watt (MW) for the Bawana Phase-I project to begin with. But after negotiations, they had come down to Rs 3.42 crore per MW. As compared to this, they had quoted only Rs 3.07 crore per MW for the Patalganga project in Maharashtra.
On June 30 this year, when the government received the final bids for the second phase of the Bawana project for generating 600-650 MW of power, that the difference in prices came to light. Ballarpur Industries, which have put in the lowest bid for this project has quoted Rs 2.1 crore per MW.
Kapoor added: ``Prices for the second phase of the Bawana project were 30 per cent lower than that quoted for the first phase. It is our experience that the prices for the quotations which come later are always lower than the first one. So we had wisely held back on our earlier decision to award Phase-I to Reliance. We are negotiating with the companies, including Reliance, and the project will be awarded to the one that offers us the lowest price. A decision in this regard will be taken soon.''
The Bawana Phase-I project was to be built, operated and managed by Reliance. While the money on building the project had to be spent by Reliance, the government had to pay them for the power that they would purchase from them. Consequently, a higher price of construction would have translated into higher tariffs for the consumers. Incidentally, the terms and conditions had already been finalised and only the Power Purchase agreement had to be signed.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
