The Hindu : ADB dictating terms: Karunakaran

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 11, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala

ADB dictating terms: Karunakaran

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM FEB. 10. The senior Congress leader, K. Karunakaran, today took a dig at the Antony Government for its alleged propensity towards allowing foreign funding agencies like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to dictate terms to it.

``Don't we have this new ADB master dictating terms to us," he asked while inaugurating the work on a 3.5-MW small hydel project at Meenmutti in Thiruvananthapuram district.

"I am sure that the people of the State know how to make their Government take the decisions for us," he said.

Mr. Karunakaran said that he had gone through newspaper reports stating that the ADB had recommended hiking the power tariff in the State to Rs. 3.90 per unit.

Changing tack, Mr. Karunakaran said, "the Global Investor Meet (GIM) organised recently by the Antony Government is no solution to the State's problems.'' What Kerala needed was purposeful initiatives to improve production and generate employment. For this, the first priority should be the power sector.

He said that during his last tenure as Chief Minister, 25 per cent of the Plan funds was set apart for the development of the power sector, considering its significance to the overall economic development of the State.

The Electricity Minister, Kadavoor Sivadasan, who presided over the function, said the Government's policy now was to bring down the per unit cost of power generation in the State by starting as many hydel projects as possible. The high cost of thermal electricity being drawn by the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) led to the present financial crisis in the power sector.

Describing the steps the Government had taken to bring down the per unit cost of the electricity being supplied to the consumers, he said eight mini-hydel projects were expected to be commissioned in the State during this year itself. Efforts were on to set up 61 small hydel projects in the private sector.

The Government would also press for the Centre's environmental clearance for the proposed hydel project at Pooyamkutty. The legal bottleneck for the Athirappally hydel project too was getting sorted out, he added. The Minister for Cultural Affairs, G. Karthikeyan, who too addressed the function, said "environmental fundamentalism'' was the biggest threat to the development of the power sector in the State.

Though the MP representing the area, Varkala Radhakrishnan, and the MLA, Pirappankode Murali, both belonging to the CPI(M), were also listed as `chief guests' in the programme notice, they kept away from the function, reportedly due to "the efforts to turn the programme into a Congress affair''.

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