India Eyes Australia's Coal and Gas Sector: Report
Private Indian firms are reportedly looking into buying opportunities in Australia's natural resources sector.
In a report picked up by The Australian, Goldman Sachs India chief executive officer Sonjoy Chatterjee said Indian corporates have been closely monitoring the business climate at Australia.
"A lot of Indian clients are looking at Australia very closely," he said on the sidelines of a business summit. "If I look at outward investment from India, Australia really is the principal destination right now."
Without mentioning names of private firms, Chatterjee said Indian overseas activity with Australian business entities "will likely pick up in the coming months."
Chatterjee said he does not see the strengthening Australian dollar nor the stability of Australia's minority government posing a posing a problem to Indian investors.
"They are still very keen to snap up the good assets out there," he said.
Earlier, India sealed alliances with Australian miners to feed its coal needs, such as the Gujarat-based Adani Group that bought Linc Energy's Queensland coal tenements in August for $2.72 billion and the $730 million deal signed between Lanco Infratech and Griffin Coal's mines in Western Australia in March.
India is currently experiencing an escalating energy crisis, plagued by blackouts and electricity malfunctions because of rapid urbanization where supply can no longer keep up with demand. For India to continue its economic growth, pegged at about 9 per cent annually, the country needs to add 75,000 MW of power generation over the next five years.
For this to materialize, India needs to produce a lot of coal. It would have been just as easy for India to acquire coal especially since the country is actually sitting atop 10 per cent of where the world's coal reserves are located, approximately worth 267 billion tonnes. But most of Indian coal reserves lie in forest areas and cannot be mined for environmental concerns.
But politics and bad policy decisions have hampered the development of the natural resource right of India's very own use. It had resorted to importing coal instead of developing its own.
Nearly 85 percent of India's new power generation over the next five years is targeted to come from coal-burning plants.
This year, India aims to produce 554 million tonnes of coal. But it actually needs 696 million. By 2016-17, India will require a billion tonnes.