NEW DELHI, Nov 16: India’s peak power deficit touched a 10-year high of 14.6 per cent between April and October, new data shows, due to an exceptional spurt in demand and worse-than-expected capacity addition.

Capacity addition of 3,765MW in the first seven months of the financial year to March 2008 was just 32 per cent of the target, India’s Business Standard newspaper reported on Friday, citing official figures.

India faces a chronic power crunch that is viewed as a major threat to its fast-growing economy. India’s government has further scaled down its expected power capacity addition in the current year to 12,000MW from 17,000MW, the newspaper said.

“We may actually add no more than 10,000MW this year,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed power ministry official as saying.

Capacity addition was unable to keep pace with demand due to lack of equipment and manpower, the official said.

Worst hit are industrialised states like Maharashtra and Gujarat in western India where the region posted a peak shortage of 26.6 per cent in October, the paper said.

The government aims to invest $250 billion in power infrastructure comprising generation, transmission and distribution by 2012.

But experts say capacity addition should be accompanied by power reforms, especially those aimed at cutting transmission and distribution losses and rampant power theft.

The government has been promoting 4,000MW “ultra mega” power projects to boost power supply in the country of 1.1 billion where 412 million people have no electricity.—AFP