India has cancelled a contract made 2 years ago of Indonesia based PT Hexing as it did not meet the criteria for local manufacturing.
PT Hexing is said to be owned by Hanzou headquartered Hexing electrical co.
The move follows the government’s decision to restrict firms from countries with a shared land border from participating in bids for government procurement, without approval from competent authorities.
EESL, which is implementing the world’s largest smart metering programme in India, had earlier put the contract on hold. PT Hexing had won the tender for 2 million units around two years ago. Now, EESL plans to call snap bids for 3 million smart meters.EESL is a joint venture between NTPC Ltd, Rural Electrification Corp. Ltd, Power Finance Corp. Ltd and Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd.
ESL’s smart meter programme plans to replace 250 million conventional meters that will help increase debt laden discoms’ annual revenues to ₹1.38 trillion. India’s proposed ₹3.5 trillion distribution reform scheme to cut electricity losses below 12% starts with smart meters and also the government plans to convert all electricity meters into smart prepaid meters by 2022.
As the smart meter requires a two-way communication network, control centre equipment and software applications, which enable near real-time gathering and transfer of energy usage details. The government is cautious about such equipment running the risk of being infected by a malware.
