The State Government would fulfil its mission of providing electricity to 1 crore more people by the end of 2018, said Energy Minister Prafulla Mallick here on Wednesday.
Inaugurating the FICCI’s EM-Power conference, the Minister said 68 lakh people have already been given electricity; the rest 32 lakh would be covered by December 2018.
“Odisha’s electricity demand is 4,200 MW now. Odisha manages to get 3,500 MW. To fill up the gap, we have to produce electricity from different sources. We have to develop our small hydro projects to provide adequate electricity to the people of the state,” the Minister said.He hoped that the State can produce 200 MW electricity from small hydro projects.FICCI Chairman Subhrakant Panda Odisha has immensely benefitted from the power reform mission during the last 20-22 years.Many experts discussed on various challenges being faced by the poere sector.
Among others, OERC Chairman UN Behera, OHPC CMD Vishal Kumar Dev, Cesu CEO Sadiq Alam and Gupta Power Infrastructure ltd MD MK Gupta spoke.