Nepal Foreign ministry officials have begun the groundwork for Prachanda’s visit….reports Asian Lite News
Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as ‘Prachanda’, is gearing up for his highly-anticipated trip to India next month, stating that he needs to do “home-work” before embarking on the visit.
Dahal had earlier visited India after attending the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, during his first tenure as Prime Minister.
In 2016 again, he had visited New Delhi while his second tenure as the premier.
“I am preparing for my upcoming visit to India, which is taking place soon” Mr Prachanda said at an event here.
“We need to do proper home-work before the visit,” the 68-year-old Maoist leader said.
Foreign ministry officials have begun the groundwork for his visit.
Growing energy ties
In a major boost for energy cooperation between Nepal and India, private entities and companies of both countries last week inked an agreement for selling and buying energy directly.
Earlier, this power was only enjoyed by two government or government-owned entities. Now the Nepal government has to make a law to allow the private sector to sell energy directly to external private companies.
The agreement was signed during the final day of the eighth Power Summit, inaugurated by Prime Minister Dahal.
According to Independent Power Producers Association, Nepal, the summit is the largest power sector event in Nepal, with 800 energy sector-related participants – energy trading companies, power producers, financial institutions, transmission and distribution companies, consulting companies, vendors, and think tanks, among other stakeholders – participating, including 800 international delegates from more than 30 countries. The largest number of participants were from India.
Nepal’s electricity law has no provision for granting any company other than Nepal Electricity Authority a right to trade power. Currently, the developers have only one option – to sell power to the Nepal Electricity Authority.
In January last year, Nepal Power Exchange Ltd and India’s Manikaran Power Ltd signed an MoU on energy trading. But its implementation was struck by the lack of law in Nepal that grants trading licenses.
Nepal Power Exchange Lted has not received a trading license.
Nepal’s total installed capacity has reached 2,520MW and an additional 600MW is expected to be added in 2023, according to IPPAN. The country is likely to have a generation capacity of 6,700MW by 2027 with the private sector’s contribution reaching 80 per cent to the total power generation capacity from the current 55 percent. Nepal has committed to becoming a net zero country by 2045 mainly through the use of green energy.