New Delhi: The Supreme Court's verdict to cancel all but four coal mines allocated since 1993 will have a serious ramification for the energy and steel sectors hitting their bottomlines and fines imposed alone could amount up to Rs 7,300 crore, rating agencies said Friday.
Both Fitch Ratings and ICRA said after cancellation of blocks the companies will have to depend on externally sourced coal, resulting in higher operating costs which which further would put pressure on retail tariffs for the consumers.
The reports follow the Supreme Court earlier this week scrapping the allocation of 214 out of 218 coal blocks to various companies since 1993 terming it as "fatally flawed".
"The decision is broadly credit negative for these sectors...Companies with cancelled licences will not receive any compensation on account of development expenditure incurred to date, meaning these will have to be written off... Furthermore, they will now have to pay for externally sourced coal, resulting in higher operating costs.
"The SCI's decision also levies a fine of Rs 295 per tonne on coal produced to date from the mines affected, which could amount to Rs 7,300 crore," Fitch ratings said in a statement.
The negative financial impact will vary significantly depending on the company, it said adding the ruling has no immediate direct impact on Tata Steel and SAIL.
About NTPC it said, "Power company NTPC could be more vulnerable to the decision, though Fitch maintains that the broader impact will still be relatively small. Pakhri Barwadih, an NTPC mine nearing production, has been exempt from the cancellation. The status of the other nine of NTPC's 10 coal blocks is uncertain, as it is not very clear if they are also exempt...
The company had expected that its captive mines would be able to serve 4.3 percent of its coal requirements in FY15 - rising further to 15 per cent by FY17."
The potential long-term effects of the decision on the wider power and steel sectors will depend largely on how quickly the government proceeds with re-auctioning the licences, it said.
Rating agency ICRA said as per its estimates, "Aggregate penalty till March'14 for power sector as a whole is at about Rs 6,000 crore (rpt) Rs 6,000 crore based on mining output of about 205 Million Tonne (MT)"
About 60 percent of this penalty is attributed to state sector utilities/JVs, mainly owned/co-owned by corporations belonging to the states of Punjab, West Bengal, Karnataka and Rajasthan; while balance 40 percent pertains mainly towards private sector IPP/utilities, it said.
It added taht the overall capacity in private IPP segment that would be affected by the SC order is around 18 GW, comprising a mix of operational projects (6.3 GW as on July 2014) and under-construction projects (11.4 GW expected to become operational over the next 2 year period).
"Any delays in allocation of coal blocks through bidding route would lead to dependence upon coal sourcing from open market i.E. Through e-auction or coal imports, given the shortages in domestic coal availability....This in turn is likely to increase the fuel cost of generation, which would impact their cost competitiveness," it said.
Moreover, cost of generation based on imported coal would remain exposed to volatility in steam coal price level internationally and INR-USD exchange rate, it said. In turn, this will lead to escalation in the power procurement cost for the distribution utilities which further would put pressure on retail tariffs for the consumers.
It added that out of the affected capacity in private segment, about 53 percent (9.5 GW) have firm power purchase agreements (PPA) with distribution utilities within which about 50 percent capacity is competitively bid and balance 50 per cent is based on cost-plus tariff principles.
ICRA said projects based on captive coal block with competitively bid PPAs where fuel cost variation is not a pass-through, would be most affected.
