Committee to study 600MW Budhigandaki

BY THIRA L BHUSAL
KATHMANDU, June 20

The government has formed a committee to study prospects of the 600MW Budhigandaki hydel project as it has failed to attract investors even after two calls for bids to international companies.

Not a single company applied for the storage-type hydel project even though the government extended the deadline for submission of applications.

The company has formed a three-member committee led by Anup Upadhyaya, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR). Sunil Bahadur Malla, Deputy Director General of the Department of Electricity Development, and Bhoj Raj Regmi, General Manager (Engineering) of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) are two other members of the committee.
"We have formed the committee to study how to take the project ahead as not even a single investor showed interest in the project even though we called for bids twice," Shankar Koirala, Secretary of MoWR told the Post.
The committee will study the prospects of the project and possible modalities to proceed ahead, according to him.
The government had last year decided to invite international companies for competition to undertake the project under Build-Own-Operate and Transfer (BOOT) model. But, no company applied till the deadline of 26 May.
The government had two years ago called for international proposals for Upper Karnali (300 MW), Arun-III (402 MW) and Budhigandaki (600 MW).
Nine proposals were submitted for Arun, 14 for Karnali and only two proposals were registered for Budhigandaki.
However, the taskforce, which was headed by former Finance Secretary Bhanu Acharya to study the financial and technical aspects of the proposals had disqualified both proposals .

THE KATHMANDU POST