India's electricity sector growing up

Access to reliable electricity supply is a key issue for India, when only 75% of the population having access to power. An increase in generating capacity and improvement in fuel availability goes a long way in solving the problems of power availability. But transmission and distribution still remain a challenge. Due to low per capita GDP, India's power consumption still remains low. While there has been considerable capacity augmentation in the last 10 years, the sector has been plagued by issues of distribution, and fuel shortages, which are being unclogged gradually, says Barclays.

To make the planned smart cities and industrial/manufacturing clusters viable, the Indian government has set an ambitious target of providing 24x7 electricity access to every household by 2019. In order to achieve this target, the government needs to take significant steps not just in generation, but also in the transmission and distribution of power, states Barclays.