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Reducing transmission & distribution loss a challenge: NTPC

September 12: India needs to pay attention to reduce its transmission and distribution losses which is the biggest challenge at the moment, NTPC Chairman and Managing Director Arup Roy Choudhury has said.

"India has managed to a large extent to settle the issues related to generation of power and has also improved its position on transmission front to a large extent, but the country needs to seriously look at the distribution, especially transmission losses," he said.

"Infrastructure upgradation and reaching out to consumers and take power to everybody is the biggest challenge at present," Choudury said.

Asked how much NTPC is likely to suffer because of low offtake of power by state distribution companies, the CMD said, "It will not impact NTPC at all because we are a generating company and our payment is based on capacity utilisation, which is always available."

"In 2012-13, our capacity utilisation was 88% and this year it is likely to be 90% or more," he added.

Asked what according to him could be the possible reason for low offtake of power by Discoms, Choudhury said, "Poor financial conditions appears to be the main reason for low offtake."

He, however, said NTPC is not much concerned with low offtake by Discoms as he is sure that states are doing their own budgeting. "They are buying as much power as they can pay for, which is a good sign."

Asked about lack of development by NTPC in acquisition of coal properties abroad, Choudhury said, "We could not acquire coal blocks in the joint venture (International Coal Ventures Ltd ) because the blocks which the JV was looking at were basically the blocks having coking coal reserve."

"Acquisition on our own is also not happening because of several factors. But lack of coal property acquisition is not a major issue for us. We are a generation company and our focus is to get coal at a cheaper price and right now the international coal prices are falling every day," Choudhury said.