27 May 2005 - General Electric (GE) says it is ready to work with the Indian government and other companies in order to achieve an early resolution of the Dabhol power plant fiasco.

"We want early resolution of the Dabhol issue and we want to move on," GE's worldwide President and CEO Jeffrey Immelt said at a forum organised by India's industry chamber CII Thursday.

Immelt said GE, which along with Bechtel controls 85 per cent in the beleaguered Dabhol Power Company, was willing to work with the Indian government and companies to restart the 2184 MW power plant.

"We want to do very constructive work and we are ready to work in partnership with the government or any other Indian company (for restarting the plant)," he said.

As per the revival strategy finalized by the Empowered Group of Ministers, Indian lenders will buy out the offshore debt of foreign lenders and will also settle the claims of GE and Bechtel.

After settling all claims, state-run National Thermal power Corporation and GAIL (India) Ltd would run the power plant and the LNG terminal respectively.

Indian lenders to the $3bn project, which has been shut for nearly four years, have reportedly reached an agreement with GE and Bechtel to settle their claims for $305m.

Set up in two phases, DPC's Phase-I of 740 MW was earlier based on naphtha but was to be switched to LNG while Phase-II of 1,444 MW was based on LNG from the outset.