Bangladesh and Nepal are waiting for India’s consent to start power export from Nepal to Bangladesh.
India’s consent is necessary in this regard, as transmission line has to be passed through India, which stands between the two countries.
When contacted, Power Division Secretary Habibur Rahman said both Nepal and Bangladesh will sit on May 15-16 to advance the power export plan further. The fifth meeting of the joint secretary-level Joint Working Group and the secretary-level Joint Steering Committee meetings will be held then.
Top agenda of the meetings will be to find ways to get consent from India for importing power from two Nepalese projects. The first one is the 52.4-MW Likhu-4 project and the second one is the 683-MW Sunkoshi-3 hydropower project.
In the last working group meeting, held in Kathmandu in August 2022, both the countries agreed to start exporting 40-50 MW power to Bangladesh.
The plan is to use the high-voltage Baharampur-Bheramara cross-border power transmission link to import power from the Likhu-4 project, the Power Division officials said.
The project stands on the border of Okhaldhunga and Ramechhap districts in Nepal. It started commercial production last year.
About the plan on the Sunkoshi-3 project, the Power Division secretary said it would take a long time.
Nepal already sent the project’s feasibility study report and environment impact assessment report to Bangladesh.
Bangladesh showed interest to develop the project jointly with Nepal. Both the countries decided to involve India in this big project to ensure the use of Indian territory for power transmission.
According to officials, Nepal and Bangladesh requested India, and in response the country said it was in favour of such initiative.
“They’ve assured us that they will consider the request positively,” the secretary added.
“As India itself is the promoter of regional power trade through common grid, we hope that the country will give its consent quickly,” a senior official of the Power Division said.
Nepal and India intended to widen collaboration in the power sector and to include partner nations under the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) framework, according to the joint vision statement on power sector cooperation between the two countries - issued in April last year.
The state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) sent a request to the Indian authorities concerned through the NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam, a nodal agency for bilateral electricity trade, said a report.
During the 10th Joint Working Group and the Joint Steering Committee meetings between Nepal and India - held in this February, India agreed to grant its approval once Nepal would submit the proposal along with the project details whose power would be sold to Bangladesh, it added.
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