Nepal, India, Bangladesh to sign tripartite power trading deal on July 28

New Delhi: Nepal will sign a tripartite power trading deal next week to export 40 MW of electricity to Bangladesh via India, a senior official said on Thursday.

This will be the first time in history that the Himalayan nation will sell electricity to a third country other than India.

Ground has been cleared for the three countries to sign the agreement on exporting electricity to Bangladesh, said Chandan Kumar Ghosh, spokesperson at Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) -- the government-owned electricity body.

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The Power Sales Agreement will be signed by officials from the NEA, the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and the NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd (NVVN) of India at a function here on July 28, Ghosh said.

Nepal's Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, Dipak Khadka, India's Power Minister, Manohar Lal Khattar and Bangladesh's Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister, Nasrul Hamid, will witness the signing ceremony, he said.

Under the agreement, the NEA will export 40 MW of hydroelectricity to Bangladesh via India from June 15 to November 15 every year.

As per the agreement, Nepal will get a tariff of USD 0.064 per unit for selling electricity to Bangladesh.

Nepal will transmit the energy to India through the 400KV Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur cross-border transmission line. India will then transmit the equivalent to Bangladesh.

The delivery point will be a 400kV substation at Muzaffarpur in India, and Bangladesh will pay the transmission charge for using the Indian transmission infrastructure.

According to an estimate by the NEA, Nepal will receive around Rs 330 million through the sale of electricity.

Last month, a meeting of the ‘Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase’ of Bangladesh approved a proposal to import 40 MW of electricity from Nepal.

In January, Nepal signed a long-term agreement for the export of 10,000 MW of power to India, and jointly inaugurated three cross-border transmission lines during the two-day visit of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to the Himalayan nation.

Nepal has prepared an energy development strategy intending to produce 28,000 MWs of electricity in the next 12 years; of that, a target has been set to export 15,000 MWs to different countries including India, Nepal media had said then.

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