UNITED CITY END WIN SPREE
Sectoral milestone: When it commenced operations in 1996, Manah power project set up by United Power Company became the Middle East’s first privately funded and operated power plant
Manchester United’s performance was a masterclass in defence and counterattacking in their 2-0 win over their biggest rivals Manchester City. It took their unbeaten run to 22 in Premier League away matches and ended City’s impressive sequence of 28 unbeaten matches in all competitions including 21 successive wins which also has them leading the league table by 11 points.
United manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, praised his team: “We’ve improved massively, we’re more robust and resilient, and there is more personality in the team — that is what I like. We need to improve on so many things to get our consistency better. We need to be a better Man United than we were 16 months ago.
He added: “I thought we defended really well and we were more like ourselves with the ball attacking-wise. City are so far ahead you can’t really think about anything but making sure we win our games and be better than last year. We were third last season, so we want to move up the table, of course.”
United went into the lead as early as the second minute with a penalty when within 40 seconds of the start Gabriel Jesus, who had lost possession of the ball in midfield, came into the box and sent Anthony Martial sprawling. Bruno
Fernandes placed the spot kick to the left of Ederson who got a hand to it but the shot was firmly struck.
City missed chances, the best of which came to Raheem Stirling who missed his kick from a good position and Ilkay Gundogan shot wide tamely. United kept defending well and Dean Henderson in goal, in place of David De Gea — on paternity leave in Spain — looked safe.
Within two minutes of the start of second half, City could have equalised but Rodri’s shot hit the bar after a clever build-up between Riyad Mahrez and Jesus. But just three minutes later, United again got an early goal, as they did in the first half.
Henderson’s long throw located Luke Shaw who raced passed two defenders and exchanged passes with Marcus Rashford before striking a low shot inside the far post. In the later stages Jesus put a shot wide and Stirling missed after a pass from Kyle Walker with United’s defence remaining solid.
A disappointed City manager, Pep Guadiola, said: “We will be in the news because we lost but the news is 21 victories in a row. The result is going to help us a lot to understand how difficult it is. It’s a lesson in football everything can happen. Congratulations to United.” He added: “We need six or seven victories from 10 games. It’s in our hands. Our opponents have to win all their games and we have to lose four or five. We have to start to win again.”
United Power Company (UPC), which set up the Sultanate’s first privately funded and developed at Manah in Al Dakhiliyah Governorate back in 1996, is preparing to delist from the Muscat Stock Exchange ahead of its formal liquidation.
It comes as the company – a pioneer in Oman’s electricity sector and indeed the wider Middle East region – approaches the end of its contractual obligations upon the expiry of its power generation license.
When it brought into operation a modest-sized 90 MW power plant in September 1996, UPC made history in the region as the first private company to finance, develop, operate and maintain an electricity generation facility as an Independent Power Project (IPP).
Output from the plant was supplied to the erstwhile Ministry of Electricity and Water under a 20year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).
Three years later, additional capacity of 180 MW was added to the site, with its output covered by a separate 20year Supplemental Agreement to the PPA.
This second phase was launched in May 2000.TURN
But unlike Independent Power Projects (IPPS) developed under the modern Sector Law promulgated in 2005, which are covered by the Build-ownoperate (BOO) model, the two phases of the Manah project were designed on the basis of the Buildown-operate-transfer (BOOT) model. Under the latter model, United Power Company was obliged to transfer the plant assets to the government upon the expiry of the 20-year contract.
Those obligations began to take effect starting from last year. Following a notification from the Oman Power and Water Procurement Company (OPWP) — the sole procurer of capacity and buyer of power and water output under the Sector Law — UPC formally transferred ownership of the Manah power assets on May 1, 2020.
Those assets passed into the hands of Al Ghubrah Power and
Desalination Company (GPDCO), a state-owned subsidiary of Nama Group (formerly The Electricity Holding Company).
Earlier, in 2016, a few transmission assets linked to Phase 1 of the Manah project were transferred to Oman Electricity Transmission Company (OETC) and Mazoon Electricity Distribution, also subsidiaries of Nama Group.
Following the transfer of its generating assets, UPC was informed by the sector regulator, the Authority for Public Services Regulation (APSR), that its generation licence had been revoked as well.
With no more assets to its name, United Power’s Board of Directors last November sought approval from the Capital Market Authority (CMA) for the conversion of the listed company (SAOG) into a SAOC.
The Authority’s green-light will allow for UPC to reduce its current capital of RO 2 million to RO 500,000.
That move will eventually pave the way for the company’s liquidation — a process likely to take a couple of years.
Looking back on UPC’S historic role as a trendsetter in the region, Murtadha bin Ahmed bin Sultan, Chairman of the Board of Directors, said: “Till the date of the transfer on April 30, 2020, the Manah Power Plant was operating smoothly and efficiently since the commissioning of the Plant primarily due to ENGIE and STOMO/SOGEX who have contributed to Manah IPP since the inception of the project in the mid-90s and their different roles at different stages of the project.
We would also like to share that UPC and our operators had successfully achieved a unique record in the global electricity sector i.e. No lost time accident from the inception till the handover of the plant. This is a proud achievement of the Government of Oman,” he added in the Directors’ Report for fiscal 2020.
BENGALURU: Bad loans and credit costs are expected to rise at Indian banks as easy money policies to shore up a pandemicbattered economy may start to tighten, Fitch Ratings said.
The coronavirus lockdowns last year slammed an already struggling financial sector, but recent quarterly reports have shown an improvement in profits and asset quality. Noting that the recent improvement masked underlying pandemic stress, Fitch said banks would increasingly feel the pinch from the continued impact on small businesses and rising unemployment.
“Fitch believes that the disproportionate shock to India’s informal economy and small businesses, coupled with high unemployment and declining private consumption, have yet to fully manifest on bank balance sheets’’, the rating agency said.
India’s economy returned to growth in the third quarter, but many sectors continue to operate below capacity and some indicators point to stress in retail customers, Fitch said.
Fitch added it sees high risk of a “protracted deterioration” in asset quality with more pressure on loans to retail and stressed small and medium-sized enterprises. The Reserve Bank of India had in January warned that banks may see bad loans double to 14.8 per cent under a severe stress scenario.
State-owned banks, with their limited capital buffers, will be more vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic than private-sector peers, and the government’s plan to pump $5.5 billion into these lenders over fiscal 2021 and 2022 is unlikely to be enough.
The ratings agency estimates state-owned lenders need $1558 billion in capital, under various stress scenarios. Higher contingency reserves at private banks, which offer them better earnings and capital resilience, make them better poised for growth in 2021, Fitch said.