Telangana govt to invest ₹94,000 crore in power sector: CM Rao

HYDERABAD: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday said his government is taking steps to make the state “power surplus” and has an investment outlay of Rs 94,000 crore for the sector.

Making a statement in the Legislative Assembly, Rao said that since last night, the staterun power utilities have started supplying 24-hour free power to 23 lakh agriculture pump sets on an “experimental basis”.

“As soon as Telangana state was formed (in June 2014), the government gave utmost priority to uplift the state from power crisis. Short term, medium term and long term planning was evolved and implemented. An action plan was developed to transform Telangana into a power surplus state with an investment of about Rs 94,000 crore,” Chandrasekhar said.

The government took steps to accelerate the pace of generation plant works, he said, adding that the construction of new plants was started and trans- mission as well as distribution systems were also strengthened, he said. Power corporations are fully geared up to supply 11,000 MW to meet the demand on account of 24 hours of power for the agriculture sector in the coming Rabi season.

“I am happy to announce to the people of Telangana through this august house that Telangana has created new record of supplying quality power free of cost for 24 hours to the agriculture sector. “For the first time in the history, 24 hours power is being supplied from last night on an experimental basis to 23 lakh agricultural pump sets in the state,” Chandrasekhar said.

The power utilities of the state will closely monitor the transmission and distribution network for five to six days and supply 24-hour uninterrupted power on a permanent basis from the coming Rabi season, he said. In Telangana, 25 per cent of power (consumption in the state) is being utilised by the agricultural pump sets, he said. NEW DELHI: To address the gorwing demands of enterprise workloads in India, Us-based chip maker AMD on Wednesday launched next-generation “Ryzen PRO” desktop processors.

The “Ryzen PRO” are the first 8-core, 16-thread processors for commercial grade PCS. The ₹Zen' core in every chip provides up to 52 per cent improvement in compute capability over the previous generation.

“Ryzen 7 PRO 1700” offers up to 62 per cent more multithreaded performance than select competing solutions.

The chips also provide hardware-based cryptographic and security technologies to help protect against cyber threats. NEW DELHI: Domestic copper sector is being adversely impacted by imports from Japan and ASEAN region, industry majors Birla Copper and Sterlite Copper said on Wednesday while requesting the government for an intervention.

Speaking at the India Copper Forum here, J C Laddha, CEO, Birla Copper said import is a big deterrent and a huge challenge for the domestic players. The copper industry is being impacted by two free trade agreements (FTAS), one is with ASEAN and the other one is with Japan, he said.

In 2016-17, the total import of wire was 89,000 tonne out of which 98 per cent had come under FTA from ASEAN region and that is creating problem for local manufacturers.

The commodity has a bright future in India as the per capita consumption of copper will double by 2025 to 1 kg. In China, per capita consumption is about 9 kg and in India it is 0.5 kg. The demand for copper will grow in sectors like power, auto and e-vehicles, construction, railways, consumer durable and renewables, he said adding “we have to create a structure within the government that facilitates policy and decision making related to copper”. These are the sectors having steady growth, he said. He also requested the government to check the imports, and called the local industry to be globally cost competitive for which creating a level playing field for the domestic players is very important.

He urged the government to encourage growth and ensure adequate safeguard against import by various means such as non tariff barriers. Further, he suggested the government to reconsider FTAS that lower barriers for exports, raise custom duty for downstream products to the extent that it doest not hurt downstream industry.

“We have two existing Ftas...from where we are getting a lot of imports, in fact the imported material has jumped from a level of 50,000 tonne per annum to roughly around 2,50,000 tonne which is nearly 1/3rd of the total consumption of refined copper,” P Ramnath, CEO, Sterlite Copper, Vedanta Ltd said. This is a something of huge concern.

“We would like the government to take note of this so that in future FTAS these points are addressed,” Ramnath said.

He further said there should be a ban on recyclers who are violating norms and compromise with the quality.

A lot of scrap, he said, is coming from producers who do not have machines to remove impurities from copper which is resulting in poor quality products.