The government has released Rs 102 lakh crore blueprint for infrastructure development. The national infrastructure pipeline will give top priority to energy, roads, urban development and railways in 5 years with a big push on renewables.

Power secretary Sanjeev Nandan Sahai talked about the roadmap for power sector and the challenges faced by the sector.

“According to data, India’s per capita consumption of power is one-third of the global average. We have given access to all the households now and we expect that as incomes grow the demand for power will increase and hence there has to be investment in all the 3 sectors – generation, transmission and distribution,” said Sahai in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

“The bulk of the investment will be in distribution, which will be about Rs 4 lakh, about Rs 3 lakh in transmission and about Rs 2 lakh crore in generation in the next 5 year,” he further added.

“I don’t have the exact breakup of work in progress and what will be handed out but I can say with lot of confidence that about Rs 4 lakh crore of distribution sector is going to be completely new investment, substantial investment of Rs 3 lakh crore in transmission will be new investment. Right now I don’t have the breakup about generation,” he stated.

He further said that they were looking Rs 1.5 lakh crore spend on smart metering. “Smart metering is going to pave the way for financial sustainability of the DISCOMs."

"We are also bringing out distribution reform scheme, which is focused on institutional reforms and incentivizing the DISCOMs to adopt institutional reforms, which essentially is going to look at private participation in different forms,” added Sahai.

With regards to DISCOMs, he said, “We are working out on a package which will help DISCOMs reduce the past dues to the generators. If that doesn’t happen, the generation sector will be stressed. So, we have to do that and we will do that very soon.”