Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli inaugurated the 456 mw Upper Tamakoshi Power Project, the largest hydropower project in the country, which took over a decade time and massive cost overruns. The energy project is one of the most crucial projects of national importance and is expected to increase the country’s GDP by around 1 percent. 

Built on the Tamakoshi river in Dolakha district in north-central Nepal, some 200 km east of capital Kathmandu, the project has six units, each with a capacity of 76 mw. It cost $730 million, almost double the initial estimate. Once all units are operational, the ambitious project will make Nepal a power surplus country. 

“The project has boosted our confidence,” Oli was quoted as saying by The Kathmandu Post. “We can now develop these types of projects through our own resources and manpower. We ended the load-shedding in 2017 but that was by importing power,” he added. 

Currently, Nepal imports $300 megawatts of electricity from India. Now the country has 1,385 MW of electricity, enough to fulfill the domestic need.

Vishnu Paudel, the country’s energy minister, said, “It will help boost industrial production. This project shows that we can collect the fragmented capital within the country and invest in projects like Upper Tamakoshi.”

For years Nepal’s development and economic prosperity was hampered by the lack of critical basic infrastructure, and the energy sector was one of them. 

 (SAM)