BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Power Transmission Corporation Limited (OPTCL) on Wednesday signed a long-term loan agreement with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) for the development of power infrastructure in the state.
As per the agreement, NABARD will extend a loan of Rs 1,685.27 crore to OPTCL at an interest rate of 7.75 per cent per annum. Of the total loan amount, Rs 900 crore will be utilised for new transmission projects, while the remaining amount will be used for swapping existing high-cost loans.
Speaking on the occasion, deputy chief minister-cum-Energy minister KV Singh Deo said, “This is the first-ever project financing by NABARD to any state PSU in Odisha, making it a landmark development in the state’s power sector.”
He said the swapping of the high-cost loan of OPTCL with NABARD will reduce the financial burden of the corporation as well as the transmission tariff. “The consumers of the state will get the benefit of reduced transmission tariff. This is a long-term loan repayable in 15 years, the first three years being a moratorium period,” Singh Deo added.
The NABARD finance will take care of the project costs of five substations and six major transmission lines. Of the five sub-stations, the 400/200 KV Gas Insulated Substation (GIS) at Erasama near Paradip in Jagatsinghpur district is a major project being executed by OPTCL at an estimated cost of Rs 850 crore.
The GIS sub-station will boost power infrastructure, connecting it to national grids, and serve the entire industrial cluster in the Paradip Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Region (PCPIR) of IOCL, JSW steel project and numerous large-scale industries including the upcoming green hydrogen projects.
Sources in OPTCL said Rs 600 crore of the NABARD loan will fund the GIS sub-station project. The transmission utility is also developing a 132/33 KV digital grid sub-station at Agalpur-Rampur in Balangir district, similar capacity sub-station at Athamallik in Angul district and 220/33 KV GIS sub-station at Madanpur-Rampur in Kalahandi district.
As NTPC is planning to commission the first unit of the Stage-III (2x660 MW) Talcher Thermal Power Station by November 2026, OPTCL is running against time to complete the 400 KV Talcher-Meramandali transmission line to evacuate the state’s share of 660 MW power. The project is implemented at a cost of Rs 77 crore, the sources added.
The agreement was formally exchanged between director (Finance), OPTCL SK Sahoo and general manager, NABARD, Odisha Regional Office VK Nag at Lok Seva Bhawan in presence of OPTCL MD Bhaskar Jyoti Sarma.