Wednesday, February 10, 2010

That sure is a lot of crores

This is a Rs 14,296-crore (Rs 142.96 billion) scam and the Gujarat government has no right to 'donate' public wealth to a private player in this dubious manner," Gohil said.

Elaborating on the issue he said that with a meager investment of Rs 381 crore (Rs 3.81 billion), the hitherto unknown Swan Energy will walk away with Rs 14,296 crore. "Starting from Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to top officials of Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation, energy department and chief minister's office are involved," Gohil claimed.

Ooooh!

The full story here.

3 comments:

Hari Batti said...

This is really rotten business. Modi needs to go. (AND it's interesting to find carbon credits involved in all this. I think we really need to think twice about cap-and-trade schemes; they are too open to corruption in general, in part because they are so complicated... Cap-and-dividend is probably better--but that's for another day.

Unknown said...

Lets give it up for the champions of privatization and disinvestment. Wish an increasing number would read EPW & Frontline instead of the semi-tabloids that pass for respectable dailies in our cities. At least they'll learn that whatever else is 'nano' sized there, the magnitude of corruption is not!

Ron said...

One can question as to why the stake sale happened without a public bid, but the opposition's claim of a 14,296 cr scam is moronic.
A 700 MW plant cannot give more than 1,670 cr over 10 years by my rough estimates, while the PDD is talking about 1/2 that amount:
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/gppc-dealbonanza-for-swan-energy/384510/

Of course, if the project's capacity is expanded tenfold, then so would the CER payoff. But at a min. of .8-1 cr / MW equity contribution, the investor has a right to that upside.
there is also the possibility that the project would not get approved by the CDM board at all.

the shady thing in the whole deal is the absence of competitive bidding for the stake sale. that, and not some random, half-digested numbers, should be the focus here.

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