Parliamentary committee takes a stock of MNRE’s performance

As per a recent report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy, the MNRE has continuously failed to achieve its yearly target of renewable capacity addition. During 2016-17 and 2017-18, against the grid-connected renewable energy target of 16,569 MW and 14,445 MW, the industry managed to achieve 11,319.75 MW and 11,876.82 MW respectively. This could hamper the entire mission of achieving 175 GW of renewable capacity by 2022. Further, the committee has expressed concern on the prevailing ambiguity regarding the applicable rate of the goods and services tax (GST) and stated that it is not healthy for the sector as renewable energy devices and spare parts have been kept in the 5 per cent GST slab whereas the effective rate has come out to be about 9 per cent.