Xinhua, Kathmandu :
Nepal’s financially shaky power monopoly Tuesday asked the Finance Ministry to provide it 1.41 billion Nepalese rupees (14 million U.S. dollars) to compensate losses in importing energy from India and operating diesel plants, officials at the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) said.
In a letter to the Finance Ministry over last weekend, the NEA said it incurred losses worth 1.25 billion Nepalese rupees in importing energy from neighboring India and 160 million Nepalese rupees in operating diesel plants.
Introducing a Load Shedding Reduction Action Plan in December 2012, the government had promised to compensate the losses of NEA.
The NEA pays 8.64 Nepalese rupees a unit in average to purchase energy from India while it sells 8.4 Nepalese rupees per unit to local consumers.
The technical losses and leakages of around 25 percent while importing energy from India makes loss of 11 Nepalese rupees a unit.
“If the government fails to provide the demanded amount, we can ‘t make the payment to Indian power seller,” Arjun Karki, managing director of NEA, told Xinhua. “If the Indian authority stop the energy supply, the power crisis will further deepen.”
In a bid to curb load shedding this winter, the NEA has imported as much as 150 MW energy from India while it is planning to import another 40 MW.
