Around 4.75 lakh villages had been provided electricity and the government was making a concerted effort to provide power to the remaining 11.25 lakh villages in India, Sayeed said during the inaugural address at the 14th meeting of Public Power Utility Chiefs, convened by Power Finance Corporation.
"We are making all efforts to provide electricity not only to each village but each and every household," he said, urging all to ensure success of the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidytikaran Yojana, dedicated to rural electrification.
The per capita consumption had crossed 600 kw and was expected to double in the coming years, he said.
With economic development gathering momentum, the demand for power, both in urban and rural areas, was likely to increase sharply and hence the major challenge of the power sector would be to ensure that the anticipated demand was adequately met in "a reliable and cost effective manner."
"Based on the assessment of the Central Electricity Authority, to cater to the electricity needs of all the consumers, we have to add 1,00,000 mw of additional capacity during the 10th and 11 plan.
The estimated investment for installing such additional power capacity is around nearly Rs 8,00,000 crore (Rs 8000 billion)," he said.
In the private sector, a total of Rs 60,000 crore (Rs 600 billion) would be invested for generation of 15,000 mw, he added.
Power generation growth this June was 9.3 per cent and in the first quarterly, it was 7.5 per cent against the 5.2 per cent for the corresponding period last year.
Sayeed said the ongoing economic reforms have highlighted the need to accelerate, widen and deepen reforms of the infrastructure and energy sectors. This had become important to avert an impending mismatch between economic growth, and provision of infrastructure, more so, in the power sector.
Claiming that the various initiatives by the government were yielding "positive results", he said as per the study conducted by the Power Finance Corporation, the revenue gap between the state utilities had declined from 64 paise per unit in 2001-02 to 38 paise/unit in 2003-04.
As a result, the total losses of these utilities as percentage of total turnover have shown "appreciable decline."
Subsidy being disbursed to these utilities have also shown a declining trend. However, "Aggregate Technical and Commercial losses at 39 per cent continue to be a major cause of alarm," the minister said, adding, to bring down these losses, all states would have to come up with effective measures with regard to energy audit and theft control.
"We expect to see a turn-around in the financial performance of large number of power utilities," he said.
"The basic and foremost responsibility of the power industry was to provide adequate electricity at economic costs while ensuring reliable, qualitative and uninterrupted power availability to consumers" Sayeed said adding the "power sector had to grow in line with the economic growth."
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