On the other hand, if the project comes through with the support of PTC, the hydro project in Nepal will help bridge the power shortage in India's northern region.

"PTC has written a strong letter to the developers of the hydel project - namely the Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation and the West Seti Hydro Electric Corporation to come out with a revised tariff within a month's time, failing which ptc will stop further negotiations," CMD said.

Madan cited the example of trading with Pakistan which was aborted on tariff issue. ``If Nepal keeps quiet, then we would consider the whole deal as over,'' Madan said.However, the PTC chief showed signs of optimism as the transmission of the power would be through AC lines and not through the more expensive high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables. ``There would be another round of meeting with the nepal counterparts by the end of the month for a correct picture to emerge,'' Madan said.

Giving an overview of PTC's performance after a year, he said the PowerGrid, NTPC and PFC promoted corporation is now trying to aggressively get into the trading of power. ``Several FIIs have shown keen interest in PTC. We seek to garner Rs 5 crore each initially from ICICI, IDBI, IFC, LIC and IDFC and prop up the capital base to Rs 40 crore this year.''

Madan said many of the project developers have approached PTC for selling of their power from the projects other than those covered by the mega power policy and many of the state power utilities have shown interest in buying the power through ptc. Following projects are already under negotiations with PTC: Hirma power project in Orissa (3960 mw), Pipavav in Gujarat (2000 mw), Ennore in Tamil Nadu (1800 mw), Tala in Bhutan (1020 mw), Maithon in Bihar (1000 mw) and West Seti hydro in Nepal (750 mw).

PTC will be trading in surplus power from the 336 mw Chuka hydro power project in Bhutan. Another project in Bhutan, the 6X170 mw Tala hydro project, is scheduled to be commissioned by August 2004.'' Due to the present surplus power situation in eastern region, the entire power is proposed to be consumed by the northern Indian regions. Powergrid has already planned the transmission system for evacuation of power from Tala project, which has been approved by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA)''.

PTC has also been assigned the role for facilitating trading in power across the regions and across the country. PTC is to develop a market based trading mechanism so that the under utilised capacity of the central generating stations, sebs surplus, captive stations etc could be traded.

``Such trading would improve the efficient utilisation of the existing generating capacity and would bring substantial economy in the power generation and transmission, Madan claimed.