Fee hike puts off applicants for survey licences
KATHMANDU, JAN 29 -
The issuance of survey licences for hydro power projects has slowed down in recent days thanks to a hefty hike in fees. According to the Department of Electricity Development (DoED), only nine projects out of 28 applicants have obtained permits to conduct surveys during the current fiscal year.
In fiscal 2012-13, a total of 42 companies had received survey licences from among 65 applicants. The DoED introduced new licence fees by publishing a notice in Nepal Gazette in October 2012. The government had decided to ramp up the charges with a view to discourage the prevailing trend of holding licences without any intention to develop projects.
The nine projects which have received survey licences this fiscal year have a combined generation capacity of 351 MW.
According to Gokarna Raj Pantha, spokesperson at the DoED, the availability of a fixed amount of resources, apart from cost, has caused a decline in the issuance of survey licences. “If you look at the issuance of survey licences and the number of applicants since the past five years, the figures have been going down gradually,” said Pantha. “And this is also because of limited resources which are decreasing gradually.”
Pantha, however, admitted that the hike in licence fees had discouraged individuals and companies from acquiring licences. According to him, those acquiring licences now are companies who have done more homework and seem to be genuinely interested in developing hydro projects. “This has discouraged those who used to acquire licences with a motive to sell them,” said Pantha.
Meanwhile, 13 companies with a combined generation capacity of 189 MW have received generation licences so far this fiscal year. In fiscal 2012-13, the DoED issued generation licences to 37 companies with a combined generation capacity of 862 MW. The DoED has scrapped the survey licences of 10 projects having a total generation capacity of 310 MW during this fiscal year. The figure in the last fiscal year was 34. The number of cancellations of survey licences is likely to increase from this fiscal onwards since projects that are not proceeding with their plans have been seeking cancellations due to the higher fees. As per the revised tariff for survey licences, applying companies have to pay Rs 1 million for projects with a capacity of 1 MW to 5 MW, Rs 2 million for projects of 5 MW to 10 MW, and Rs 3 million for projects of 10 MW to 25 MW on an annual basis. Likewise, the fees for large projects are Rs 4 million for those with a proposed generating capacity of between 25 MW to 100 MW, Rs 5 million for projects of 100 MW to 500 MW and Rs 6 million for projects larger than 500 MW. Before the new rates came into effect, projects with a generation capacity of 1 MW to 5 MW were required to pay Rs 50,000 per year and those larger than that were charged an additional Rs 10,000 per unit.
Source: The Kathmandu Post
