News

China signs hydropower expertise deal with Nepal

15.03.2012

China has signed a US$1.6 billion agreement to develop the 760-megawatt (MW) West Seti Project hydropower plant in Nepal. The deal marks the Asian giant's entry into a sector in the Himalayan nation — water and power — that has been dominated by India for years. Water-rich Nepal has an estimated 83,000MW of hydropower potential, but actual production is only 1 to 2 percent of that. Power sales to India would potentially add billions to Nepal's strained budget resources, while helping the energy-short South Asian giant power up factories required to provide jobs for the burgeoning numbers of its young. Next door, Bhutan has one of the highest per capita incomes in South Asia, partly because of electricity sales to India. The West Seti Project will be purely for domestic consumption, and “as such we need not go for a power-purchasing agreement with India, Nepal's only assured market at the moment”, said an official with the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA).

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