Concerns that India’s burgeoning solar boom would be restrained by nervous financiers reached fever pitch in the spring, when observers suggested that less than half of the projects allocated under the first round of the National Solar Mission (NSM) would reach financial close by their summer deadline.
Those fears were well founded at the time, says Inderpreet Wadhwa, chief executive of Delhi-based PV developer Azure Power. Since then, however, local lenders have warmed to the sector considerably.
“Earlier this year, [PV] was a tough sell in the eyes of many lenders, due to the combination of technology risk, policy risk and project risk,” Wadhwa tells Recharge.
But
