Even as it is soon to be lame-duck with Parliament elections around the corner, the Narendra Modi government on Thursday took a raft of decisions to give a boost to various sectors of the economy, including thermal and hydro power, sugar, aviation and metro rail.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved a host of recommendations of a group of ministers (GoM) aimed at addressing the woes of stressed power projects — the latest official count of such projects is 34, with a total capacity of 40.13 giga watts (GW) and banks’ exposure of Rs 1.75 lakh crore. Further, to help the states meet their non-solar renewable power purchase obligations (RPO), the Cabinet declared all hydro power projects (HPOs) as renewable energy sources, extending it to plants above 25 MW capacity.
