Wednesday, April 30, 2014: Keeping in mind the fact that anti-dumping duty on solar power gear imports will increase the price of solar power production, the government of India may think of not imposing the same on the solar power manufacturers in the country. This effort will help the government bring down the cost of renewable energy, further helping it to cut country’s dependence on fossil fuel.
The renewable energy ministry will reportedly look into the dumping case filed by some domestic manufacturers next month. If such duty is imposed, the cost of solar power production will rise by at least Rs 16 million per mw. The imports, on which the duty is proposed to be imposed, are made from nations including the US, China, Taiwan and Malaysia.
According to an ET report, an official from the ministry of new and renewable energy said that they have requested the commerce ministry to look into the matter. He said, “Around 4,000 mw worth of solar projects have been tendered. Half of the projects are under The Solar Mission and almost all the state-level projects are built on imported content. They will get stuck when the prices go up if a dumping duty is imposed.”
The government has already announced a subsidy of Rs 25 million per mw in the second phase of the national solar programme. It has invited the solar power project developers to set up the plants in the PPP mode with government support of viability gap funding (VGF) of 40 per cent of the project cost. The current cost of solar power production is Rs 70-80 million per mw. A commerce department official said that the analysis has been done on the VGF they do for the projects. “If we impose anti-dumping duty, cost will definitely go up, as we import most of it, which will mean revision of the power purchase agreements,” he added.
The government is currently assessing the impact of imposing the anti-dumping duty, with the view of providing the necessary boost to the industry. It is also thinking on the lines of incentivising foreign producers to come up and set up operations here and create jobs, like it was done 30 years ago in the auto sector.
