India may miss 2009/10 power addition target

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India is likely to add only 78 percent of its targetted 14.5 gigawatts power capacity in the 2009/10 financial year ending March, Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told lawmakers on Friday.

In a written reply, the central minister said, of the targetted 78,000 mega watts (MW) capacity addition in five years ending March 2012, only 62,374 MW was likely to be added with "high level of certainity" and a further 12,590 MW on a "best effort basis".

Asian rival China on average commissions 2 gigawatts (GW) of capacity each week, while India struggles to add 10 GW in a single year, widening its power deficit and leading to large-scale outages.

Shinde also said the energy and peak shortages in India during April-October 2008 was 9.8 percent and 12.6 percent.

He said poor financial position of state utilities also makes it difficult for them to raise required resources for creating an adequate generation, transmission and distribution system.