Nepal to Purchase Electricity From India

Feb 12, 2008 - Xinhua

Nepal is preparing to buy 40 MW of electricity from India to prevent longer hours of power cut in the country, a senior official has said.

Secretary at the Ministry of Water Resources Shankar Koirala on Monday told the Finance Committee of the interim parliament that the government was at the final stage of the project, local newspaper The Rising Nepal reported Tuesday.

Arjun Karki, executive director of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), presented to Committee members NEA's short-term and long- term programs for reducing the load shedding gradually. He, however, ruled out the possibility of reducing the load shedding in the near future.

Currently weekly load shedding has reached to 46 hours in capital Kathmandu.

Nepal has a demand of about 700 MW electricity, but the total generation capacity is only 550 MW which comes down to only about 300 MW during the dry season.

The NEA's plan for reducing the load shedding includes curtailing the use of electricity through demand side management and it has put forth some alternative ways for the purpose.

Buying electricity from India and controlling leakage are NEA's short-term programs, Karki told the Committee.

Under the long-term program, the NEA has presented two schemes including operating the current electricity projects effectively and launching new ones.

Lawmakers asked the government to reduce the duration of load shedding at the earliest possible.