Tata Power is looking to raise $1 billion via asset monetisation over the next 12-18 months to clear its debt. The company is looking to divest from many of its international investments.
“We believe that in next 12-18 months we will divest from many of our international investments and we are looking at something like $1 billion of divestments and that money will be used for repaying the debt that we have,” said Praveer Sinha, MD and CEO of the company.
“We have been working on this and we have already taken up divestment in the Cennergi, which is the South African investment and the ITPC investment (Itezhi Tezhi Power Corporation) in Zambia. We are also looking at some of the other opportunities, some of our international investments which are there,” added Sinha.
Q2 was a good quarter for Tata Power with consistent performance on all the businesses. Lower losses in Mundra and favourable tariff order in the Mumbai licensed area boosted earnings.
“Our Mundra losses have come down. The under-recovery which was 90 paise last year, we have been able to bring down to 51 paise. Our renewable businesses are doing very well. In the last one year, we have commissioned nearly 400 mw. We have a pipeline of another 600 mw. Therefore, we expect that our performance will continue to be very consistent in the quarters to come by and we are definitely looking for better times in power sector,” said Praveer Sinha.
Talking about coal, he said, “We do not expect the coal prices to go up very much. The Harga Batubara Acuan (HBA) is about $70 and we expect that it will be in the same range for a few more quarters to come.”
Speaking about availability, he said, “We are operating all our plants at nearly 80 percent of availability and with the price benefit that we are offering to our consumers, they will continue to procure power from us.”
He further said that the company does not have large outstandings from Discoms for conventional power. However, some amount is due for renewable power from two states
Source : cnbctv18
