Energetica India nº91 July August 2020

Road towards AtmaNirbhar The Indian Sun Perspective With the extension of Safeguard Duty (SGD) for yet another year on imports of Chinese solar power equipments along with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s (MNRE) propos - al for the implementation of Basic Custom Duty (BCD) on imports of so - lar equipments, including solar cells, modules and inverters, the govern - ment has cleared its intention to ramp up boosting the manufacturing indus - try – a step towards making India an ‘AtmaNirbhar Bharat’. The move is significant as India im - ported about 85 per cent of solar equipments, currently, from China mainly due to cheaper products availability. It is likely that after im - position of SGD and BCD the cost of imported products got increased and would provide boost for domestic manufacturing. Starting from July 30, 2020, the SGD has been imposed at 14.9 per cent on solar imports for six months till Janu - ary 28, 2020, however, in the following six months it will be slightly lesser at 14.5 per cent. Besides, MNRE has also proposed BCD, in the range of 15-20 per cent in the first year, which would eventually increase up to 40 per cent. On the flip side, the prices of Chinese solar modules have also increased due to temporary closure of two po - ly-silicon producing giants GCL Poly and Tongwei on account of pro - duction line damage and floods re - spectively, as per the recent media reports. It can trim project returns to Indian developers. Despite all the woes, Indian Solar Industry has welcomed the govern - ment’s ‘AtmaNirbhar Bharat’ initiative and accepted the challenge in order to make India a self reliant country, and expecting enough support from the government. In my journey of exploring further about the current state of Indian so - lar industry towards becoming an ‘AtmaNirbhar’ w.r.t. safeguard duty implementation, proposed Basic Customs Duty, their impact on the industry, expectations of solar indus - try etc. A few among the well-known industry veterans representing so - lar project developers; Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) firms, and manufacturers - P. Vinay Kumar, Founder and CEO, Varp Pow - er; Manoj Gupta, VP-Solar and Waste to Energy Business, Fortum India Pvt Ltd; Sanjeev Aggarwal, Founder and CEO, Amplus Solar; Anil Joshi, Man - aging Partner, Unicorn India Ventures; K. R. Harinarayan, Founder and CEO, U-Solar Clean Energy; Shri Prakash Rai, Head C&I Business, Amp Energy India; Vikas Jain, Managing Director, Insolation Energy; discussed exten - sively about their expectations, sug - gestions and major concerns, which they hope will be taken into consider - ation by the policy makers in order to provide a combination of realistic as well as futuristic platform for all indus - try stakeholders. See what they say... P. Vinay Kumar, Founder and CEO, Varp Power Sanjeev Aggarwal Founder and CEO, Amplus Solar