Nepal Minister seeks India’s cooperation to export more power to Bangladesh

Kathmandu, Dec 9 Nepal’s Minister for Energy, Water Resources, and Irrigation Kul Man Ghising on Tuesday requested India to allow the export of an additional 20 megawatts of electricity to Bangladesh using India’s transmission infrastructure.

Under the tripartite agreement between Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, Nepal has been exporting 40 MW of electricity to Bangladesh from June 15 to November 15 each year since last year.

The request was made during his meeting on Tuesday with Munu Mahawar, Additional Secretary (North), Ministry of External Affairs of India, according to the secretariat of Minister Ghising.

Nepal’s request is in line with an agreement Nepal reached with Bangladesh when a meeting of the energy-secretary-level Joint Steering Committee was held in Dhaka in late November.

As per the bilateral agreement, Bangladesh would buy an additional 40MW of electricity from Nepal after completing the necessary process.

Nepali officials say that more power could be exported to Bangladesh via existing transmission infrastructure, provided India gives a green light to use its transmission infrastructure.

However, they say they are not sure about how India would respond, given the strained relations between India and Bangladesh since last year, when the Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India following a violent revolt against her rule in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh was not invited during the recent South Asia (Bhutan, India and Nepal) Power Summit in New Delhi, organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

During Tuesday’s meeting, Nepal’s Energy Minister also requested additional funding through the Line of Credit (LoC) mechanism of the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank of India for the construction of transmission lines. Major projects such as the Koshi Corridor in eastern Nepal and the Modi–Lekhnath transmission line in western Nepal were built with the LoC of Exim Bank, India.

The 132 kV Solu Corridor project was jointly inaugurated by the Prime Ministers of both countries on April 2, 2022, when then Prime Minister of Nepal Sher Bahadur Deuba visited New Delhi.

The Solu Corridor project comprises a 90-kilometre-long, 132 kV double-circuit transmission line and a network of substations connecting remote regions of North-Eastern Nepal to the national electricity grid. The corridor is considered vital for evacuating power generated from hydropower plants in the north-eastern Solu region and improving overall grid reliability.

Minister Ghising also urged India to remove the existing requirement that Nepal must renew approval every year for electricity exports to India’s Day-Ahead and Real-Time markets, and instead make a one-time approval permanently valid.

Two sides also discussed various problems facing the power projects developed by Indian companies. Minister Ghising also said that necessary coordination and facilitation are being initiated by his ministry and the Investment Board Nepal to resolve issues related to the use of forest land for the 669MW Lower Arun and 900MW Arun 3 projects.

SLVN Limited, an Indian state-owned company, has been developing these two projects on the Arun River in eastern Nepal.

Meanwhile, Additional Secretary Mahawar also called on a meeting with Nepal’s Interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki and discussed various aspects of Nepal-India relations, the Prime Minister’s Office said.

--IANS

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