Power industry on track for a fast & furious growth

Amit Jain, MD, CMI Ltd

Immense opportunities for Cables & Wires
The government has announced several initiatives to revive the power sector since the time has come into power. Briefing on the performance of the initiatives Amit Jain, MD, CMI Ltd says, “The future looks bright for the wire and cable industry and will provide immense opportunities for all the players and will benefit the industry. We are expecting that the industry has been growing at the rate of around 15 per cent currently, will continue to do so. Power sector being just once case in point, cables and wires are a must in every aspect of infrastructural growth and we believe there will be ample openings and avenues available for our sector in the future.”

Most of the proposed initiatives are already seeing a lot of work on ground and it is expected that they will meet their deadlines.

Investment in power sector to lead growth trajectory
Power Minister is looking at an investment of Rs 15,000 lakh crore over the next 5 years and the sector will witness a huge growth trajectory. According to Jain, “The whole sector is on a massive overdrive and working at a furious pace to meet deadlines.”

The power segment is expected to grow the fastest at 47-50 per cent CAGR, driven by large government spending on power transmission and distribution. “The speed at which the power sector grew under Piyush Goyal is likely to be maintained by the present incumbent,” Jain anticipates.

Saubhagya for wire & cable biz
Informing about the current industry performance, Jain said, “Since the past two years, the government’s focus has been on ‘Power for All’. The governmental focus on power sector is unprecedented.”

Huge outlay by the Indian government on infrastructure, focus on reducing transmission and distribution (T&D) losses and electricity for all by 2022 entails huge government and private investment in segments such as smart cities, modernisation of railways, highways, digital India campaign and non-conventional power generation and ‘Power for All’ by 2022.

He adds, “Recently, the PM announced the Saubhagya scheme which entails every household in India to have an electric meter by 2022. For this to be a reality, just imagine the growth that is envisaged for the wire and cables segment.”

CMI’s perform during the past one year
Briefing on the performance of CMI during the past one year Jain says, “The previous year has been in line with our expectations and we have been gratified by the customer response to our offerings. Our Railway contract wins have been especially heartening, in the last two quarters and we hope to outdo our wins in other segments too. This was reflected in our financials too. We closed the year 2016-17 at Rs 346.03 crore, up from Rs 271.39 crore in 2015-16. Again in the first quarter of this year, we clocked revenues of Rs 144.27 crore as against Rs 87.29 crore in Q1 2016-17. On the whole, our growth over the last few years has been consistent and we are hopeful that we will continue to outperform the industry.”