Reuters

New Delhi: NTPC Ltd, India’s top power producer, is looking to buy majority stakes in one or two Indonesian coal mines, its chairman said on 12 May.

“We have already appointed three merchant bankers for this and our endeavour is to finalise the stake purchase by the end of this financial year,” R.S. Sharma told reporters.

The company currently has a generation capacity of 29,144 megawatts. It plans to add 22,430 MW by 2012 and take total capacity to 75,000 MW in 2017 to meet the exploding power demand in the country.

Sharma said NTPC was looking for coal mines with reserves of up to 300 million tonnes of coal.

NTPC generates most of its power from coal and will need up to 130 million tonnes in the current 2008/09 fiscal year, up from 122 million tonnes a year ago.

Indian firms from steel to energy are looking overseas to buy assets and companies to get access to new technology, brands and raw material to feed their expanding capacities in Asia’s third-largest economy.

This month, Reliance Power Ltd said its unit had signed an agreement to acquire three Indonesian coal mines, while Tata Power clinched a $1.3 billion deal last year to buy stakes in two coal mines of PT Bumi Resources.