A series of issues that initially centered on the US Section 201 case, the US v China trade, China’s 531 New Deal and India’s trade tariffs, combined to slice around US$3 billion from the total global corporate funding into the solar sector in 2018, according to Mercom Capital Group.
India recently proposed a new strategy of supporting its domestic solar manufacturers by allocating 7.5GW of local content tenders to Central Public Sector Undertakings (CPSUs), but analysts have identified a number of limitations.
Imported inverters could even be subject to an extra International GST tax, while an MNRE official told Mercom that there would be a 5% increase in solar project costs.
UPDATED: India solar manufacturers have filed an anti-dumping petition with the Ministry of Trade and Commerce against Chinese solar cells and modules, according to a report from consultancy firm Mercom Capital Group, although no official notification has been released so far.
India will add 9,812MW of solar PV this year, according to the latest quarterly market update from Mercom Capital Group, which is significantly up from the 9,020MW that the consultancy previously forecast in January this year.
Despite India tripling solar deployments to reach 10GW in less than three years, the country's ultimate target of 100GW by 2022 will be extremely difficult without better enforcement of the Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO), according to Mercom Capital Group’s latest market intelligence report.