Saturday, March 22, 2014: Recently, the government of India slashed down the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s (MNRE) annual budget by a massive margin. Many solar and wind energy companies await GOI to clear their subsidy amounts, as they are left blank to gaze at the monumental projects that have been launched with these incentives. The due grants that are yet to be made via the MNRE stage at more than Rs 10 billion.
Reportedly, MNRE will not able to make payments of the promised subsidies after this month, due to a mere budget of one-third percentile for the coming fiscal year. The ministry’s budget was Rs 15.21 billion for 2013-14 that ends this month, and for the next fiscal it has been reduced by 71 per cent to only Rs 4.41 billion.
According to an ET report, Tarun Kapoor, secretary MNRE said, “The disbursement of capital subsidies is getting delayed since the market is growing very fast and we don’t have the resources to pay out. But we have been given the confidence that money will be released from the National Clean Energy Fund.”
The GOI offered incentives to wind energy projects and small solar projects from 100 KW to 2 MW, to help them compete with conventional energy. It had last released funds to wind energy companies in August 2013, for the April-September 2012 period of approvals. The amount that has to be released for solar energy companies is nearly Rs 5.5 billion, claims MNRE.
The country aims to bring 30,000 MW of renewable power capacity in the coming four years, which is a twofold multiple of the current capacity. Expansion in wind and solar power capacity have heavily depended on government’s incentives.
