Long-term power trade pact is shady!

KATHMANDU, JANUARY 10: The long-term power trade agreement reached between Nepal and India appears inimical to the national interest of the former.  This was revealed during a meeting of the Infrastructure Development Committee of the parliament held yesterday in the capital.

The agreement document presented during the meeting by Energy Minister Shakti Bahadur Banet states, among others, that a nodal agency can reach a deal on selling/buying electricity for any approved hydropower project for the medium to long term.

The very point is strictly murky and intends to serve the Indian side at the cost of the Nepali side. The hawks of New Delhi have long been refusing to buy power from hydel projects in Nepal having Chinese involvement. With this, Nepal is having difficulty managing the surplus electricity produced especially in the monsoon period.

In this context, lawmaker C.K Raut, speaking during the meeting, rightly pointed out that the phrase “approved hydropower project in Nepal” was vaguely and cunningly orchestrated by India.  “It is strictly unclear whether such a project can also be the one developed by other countries like China or the US. The very ambiguity does not bode well for the hydropower sector of Nepal.”

The same concerns were also echoed by another lawmaker Thakur Gaire.  “The agreement document has failed to mention if the southern neighbour is ready to buy power from a hydel project developed by any other foreign country.

New Delhi has long been trying to exert total control of Nepal’s hydro resources by bypassing Beijing. And the Nepali political leadership is blissfully facilitating the former in its attempts.   The shady replacement of Chinese developers from big hydel projects like West Seti by Indian ones is a case in point.

On January 4, the long-term bilateral deal was signed by Nepali Secretary of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Gopal Sigdel and Indian Energy Secretary Pankaj Agarwal on behalf of their respective governments.

The prime tenet of the deal is the export of 10,000 MW of electricity by Nepal to India in the next 10 years.  However,  former bureaucrats and rights activists argue this is something that hampers Nepal’s flexibility regarding the stored water as a natural resource.     “Viewing hydropower just as a tradable commodity is wrong. It is also intrinsically related to the use of water as a resource,” they say.