By Janardhan Baral,
New Delhi: GMR Energy Limited, which plans to develop the 900 MW Upper Karnali and 600 MW Upper Marsyangdi II hydropower projects, has said the power generated from the projects can be sold in Nepal itself. The company also said it has no plan to export electricity to India as demand is already high in Nepal.
“We are power producers and we will sell electricity wherever the demand is higher, why only Nepal? We can export electricity even to Tibet,” Associate Vice-president of GMR Rajeev Mishra said. But the price of electricity should be appropriate and there should be an appropriate mechanism for payment, he said. “But just because it is an export-oriented project, Upper Karnali is being called anti-national. We are unable to understand this,” he said in New Delhi during an interaction with a delegation of Society of Economic Journalists-Nepal on 23 February.
GMR also said it is hopeful that the project development agreement (PDA) for both the projects will be signed soon. Mishra said they have already forwarded their suggestions for amendments to the PDA template developed by the Nepal Investment Board. “We hope that the NIB will soon start talks for finalizing the PDAs,” he said. He said GMR expects that the PDA for Upper Karnali will be finalized within two months.
A meeting of the board of directors of NIB on 13 February had decided to tailor the PDAs of the two GMR-involved projects and 900 MW Arun III and 650 MW Tamakoshi III hydropower projects on the basis of negotiations. NIB has also said its technical analysis found both the projects [Upper Karnali and Upper Marsyangdi II] as secure sustainable.
GMR said it has estimated that it will cost a total of Rs 113.73 billion [unclear whether it is Nepali or Indian currency] to complete Upper Karnali. GMR has also expressed commitment to provide Nepal 12 percent of the power generated from the project and 27 percent of equity shares free of cost. “Both the commitments were made when the project’s capacity was planned at 300 megawatts. Now that both the capacity and cost of the project have increased, the benefits Nepal will get will increase proportionately,” Mishra said. GMR expects the project being developed under Build-Own-Operate-Transfer model to be complete by 2017.
Meanwhile, Srikantha Bhandarkar, the general manager of New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, which is managed by GMR, said GMR is interested in the upgrade of the Tribhuvan International Airport and the planned international airport of Nijgadh, Bara. “We have the experience of constructing the Indira Gandhi International Airport, which is the world’s second best airport,” Bhandarkar said. GMR had completed the modernization of Indira Gandhi Airport in 37 months. For a similar work involving international airport, it takes additional 12 months on average. Bhandarkar also said GMR has the experience of constructing Rajiv Gandhi Airport of Hyderabad, Istanbul Airport of Turkey and Ibrahim Naseer Airport of the Maldives.
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