It’s being billed as one of the biggest stand-alone power equipment contracts in recent memory. NTPC is in talks with a Bhel-led consortium, also involving Alstom and Siemens, to buy boilers/turbines worth Rs 55,000 crore for its string of upcoming 600-mw and 800-mw units. Significantly, NTPC will require Cabinet clearance as it proposes to award the contract on a negotiated basis and not the tendering route. The company’s top brass has already sounded out the Union Cabinet secretary and the power minister in this regard, sources in top government circles said. The Bhel-led consortium will supply boilers and turbines for NTPC’s power ventures that embrace super-critical thermal technology. Boilers and turbines form the core of a power station. Though details are not known, the contract will involve procurement of boilers/turbines for some 10 to 12 odd upcoming NTPC projects. On receiving Cabinet clearance, NTPC plans to award the Bhel-led consortium the boiler/turbine package for the 650x2-mw Barh super critical project in Bihar. Alstom will supply boilers while Siemens will supply turbines. Interestingly, construction at Barh is yet to begin even though the project was inaugurated three years ago. At this stage, NTPC officials remain tight-lipped. The company’s spokesperson declined to comment on the issue. However, a source close to the development said: “Bhel along with Alstom and Siemens had approached NTPC some time ago for a bulk contract to supply boilers/turbines for units with capacities of at least 600 mw. NTPC wanted a bulk contract since it doesn’t have the requisite super-critical technology for manufacturing equipment. But Bhel’s partners are ready to transfer the technology only if it can bag the bulk order.” The source further said, “If the tendering process is adopted, Bhel’s partners will also not be ready to a transfer technology since there is no assurance of contracts even for a single project being awarded. Hence, instead of piecemeal contracts for super-critical projects being awarded to Bhel, it will be easier if it receives a large contract,” said an NTPC source. ET could not get an official comment from either Bhel or any of the other consortium partners on the technology-transfer issue. Going forward, in its target to remain the largest generating utility of India, NTPC has decided to maintain or improve its share of India’s generating capacity. Towards this end, it has targeted to build an overall installed capacity of over 66,000 mw by 2017.
Drug firms seek to trade off controls
Drugmakers, worried about the prices of more brands in the market coming under regulation, have offered to sell essential medicines to the government at 50% of their maximum retail price (MRP). They have also offered to finance a mechanism to deliver these drugs at a concessional price by contributing 0.25% of their total profits to the government, which could be a little less than Rs 10 crore. If the government accepts this proposal, it could signal a major shift in the way rising healthcare costs are addressed in the country. However, these offers come with a condition. The government will have to agree not to increase the scope of cost-based price control. The proposed new drug policy, which is being examined by a panel of ministers, seeks to extend cost-based price control to 354 medicines classified as essential by the health ministry, from the existing 74. While the government says this would expand the extent of price control by merely 7% to about 32% of the Rs 32,000-crore market, the industry says nearly half of the market would come under direct or indirect government control. According to an ORG-IMS survey covering about three-fourths of the National Essential Drug List, the new policy would lower the prices of more than 7,000 ‘formulation packs’. These are strips of different sizes (say, 10 or 20 pills in one) of various strengths (say, 5 or 10 mg) of these 354 medicines, covering 27 therapeutic segments like painkill-ers, antibiotics, psychotic drugs, cancer and HIV drugs. Cost-based price control has been referred to as an aberration in a free market economy by experts.
With the price regulator claiming that price monitoring has been a success in keeping a check on spiralling prices, the industry wants to shift to a monitoring system from the cost-based system. The Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), the leading industry association of research-focused companies like Ran-baxy and Sun Pharma, has told the government and regulator that the country should move away from the cost-based system of price control to a monitoring system. IPA secretary-general DG Shah told ET: “The industry has made a conditional offer to sell essential drugs to the government at half the MRP. Also, the industry is willing to contribute a quarter of a percent-age of their total profits to the government for setting up a medicine delivery system to the masses, if the government does not expand the number of drugs under price control to 354 from the existing 74, based on cost-based price monitoring.”
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