Nepal plans to import more power from India

Mar 5, 2009 - Xinhua

KATHMANDU - Nepal plans to negotiate with India on importing additional 50 MW power to cope with the daily 16-hour power outage, local media reported on Thursday.

Water Resources Secretary Shanker Prasad Koirala has said Nepal plans to take special initiative to import power from India to solve the ongoing power crisis in the country during a fourth high- level secretarial meeting of Nepal-India Joint Committee on Water Resource (JCWR) to be held from March 12 to 13 in New Delhi.

An existing import-export agreement allows Nepal to import up to 150-MW electricity from India. "Additional import of power will be an important agenda during the two-day meeting," Koirala was quoted by eKantipur.com as saying.

"Besides power import, we will give special attention to speed up the construction of power transmission lines joining the two countries during the meeting," he said.

As a part of power export-import agreement with India, Nepal has been importing 50-MW at present. Apart from the 50-MW power import-export agreement between the two countries, there is also an agreement on import of 60-MW at the industrial level.

According to Koirala, besides the power issue, other water related cases will also be discussed in the meeting.

The third JCWR meeting was held in Kathmandu in September 2008.