Nepal Electricity Authority to be made competent, competitive: Energy Minister Pun

Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Barsha Man Pun has said that the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has new challenges with prideful achievements. At a program organized to mark the 35th anniversary of NEA, Minister Pun, who is also the chairman of the NEA Board of Directors, committed to making NEA further competent and competitive.

Reliable power supply to the consumers and electrification to the remaining 10 percent households, becoming self-reliant in electricity, increasing the level of domestic power consumption and exporting power in the external markets are the challenging jobs ahead, the Minister said.

He shared that PPA would be done with the power developers from the private sector and the environment would be created for seeking a competitive market for the sale of electricity.

Stating that the government will develop only reservoir-based and semi-reservoir-based mega hydropower projects, Minister Pun added that the government has advanced Upper Arun (1061 MW) and Dudh Koshi Project (600 MW).

Also speaking at the program, National Planning Commission Member Krishna Prasad Oli, Chairman of Electricity Regulation Commission Dilli Bahadur Singh and Energy Secretary Dinesh Kumar Ghimire lauded the progress of the NEA made in the recent time and called for institutional development of NEA, automation of system upgrade and management of the surplus power in the near future.

Similarly, Managing Director of NEA Kulman Ghising admitted that some under-construction projects could not be completed in time due to certain reasons despite sincere efforts, which could shadow the good performance of the NEA.

He shared that charging stations would be built and lift irrigation would be promoted and cooking gas would be replaced with an electric oven to increase power consumption in the domestic market.

As shared on the occasion, the NEA made Rs 11.06 billion in profit in the fiscal year 2076/77 BS, which has made the NEA’s economic health sound bringing the company’s total profit to Rs 4.87 billion.

In 2072/73 BS, the NEA had a total loss of Rs 34.61 billion. Of the public enterprises in the country, NEA is the highest profit-making public enterprise for the past two consecutive years.

Likewise, the NEA has made whopping progress in controlling electricity leakage. The electricity leakage in the system is 15.27 percent now, which was 25.78 percent in 2072/73 BS.

With the control of power leakage by almost 11 percent in four years, the NEA has saved about Rs 8 billion.

Similarly, the import of power from India has reduced while the portion of Nepal’s export to India has increased in recent times.

Till the last fiscal year, Nepal imported 22 percent of total available power and it would be reduced between 5 to 10 percent in the current fiscal year, according to Managing Director Ghising.

He said that Nepal would be fully reliant in power from 2078/79 and net export shall begin then.

Ghising was of the view that Nepalis’ per person power consumption has increased gradually. In the fiscal year 2073/74, the total annual electricity consumption was recorded 4.77 billion units plus while the consumption reached almost 6.53 billion units in the last fiscal year. Currently, per person annual power consumption in Nepal is around 245 units.