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Making Provisions for Hydropower Development
By KTM Metro Reporter
January 31, 2013: the Ministry of Energy has endorsed the Procedure Related to the Hydro Electricity Development Agreement of 2069. The procedure endorsed on January 23, 2013 is for developing projects of the capacities below 500 MW, and for ensuring clarity, transparency and proper management to curb delays in the Project Development Agreement (PDA), according to the HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE of January 29, 2013.
Following the provision, project developers have to have power purchase agreement (PPA), connection agreement, letter of intent of financial institutions to invest in the project along with investors’ study and analysis report on the project, shareholders to declare 50 per cent of equity investment.
This provision made for hydropower development seems to be more for controlling the development rather than facilitating the development, as the power project developers have to make an agreement with the Nepal Electricity Authority for purchase of power, and connection agreement with the Ministry for Energy and so on before applying for any hydropower project development.
If the government is really for developing hydropower projects then forget all sorts of agreement and simply award the project with the deadline for completing power project, and leave everything including sell and connection of power grid to the investors. Let them do whatever they want the power they develop. Let them sell the power to anybody they want.
Make it very easy to develop power projects. Don’t bind them by any procedure or provisions or rules and regulations. Let them work according to the market.
Nepalis would not have so many hours of power outage if the CPN-UML had not stopped the then Prime Minister Prachanda from building a thermal plant of 200 MW no matter at what cost in 2009. The CPN-UML had written Prime Minister Prachanda not to build a thermal plant of 200 MW stating the cost would be tremendously high, and if the government ignored the CPN-UML and built the plant then it would pull out of the government.
The CPN-UML leaders were totally naive that Nepalis would need to lose the business in term of billions of rupees, and lose water supply, every house needed to have an inverter, and hard to measure the hardship the people face in term of money. They did not know that the cost of building thermal plant and then cost of production of power would be offset by the availability of the business opportunities and comfort the people have enjoyed by having sufficient power. Thanks to the most incompetent CPN-UML leaders Nepalis have been suffering from the heavy power outage.
So, the government should scrap all the controlling rules and regulations and give free hands to develop power projects. The government should simply be a facilitator to settle any disputes that might arise during and after the project implementation.
Currently, the NC and CPN-UML leaders have been hindering the development opportunities putting the brakes on the government to use the budget. These shameless leaders would have cooperated with the government on development of the country if they were sincere to the people. However, they are happy to launch the street-block protests to grab the power.
