The government has decided to establish a company to develop the Budhi Gandaki Hydropower Project.
The Cabinet meeting Tuesday decided to endorse Energy Minister Pampha Bhusal’s proposal to that regard, according to a minister. “Decision has been taken to move forward forming a public company,” the minister stated.
The company will have share investment of the government, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), local bodies and commoners.
The Energy Ministry earlier had sent a proposal to develop the project in company model.
The government in April had decided to develop the project with domestic investment.
The then Pushpa Kamal Dahal government on May 23, 2017, when Janardan Sharma was energy minister, had decided to award the 1200 MW project to China Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC) under the engineering, procurement, construction and finance (EPCF) model without a bidding process.
The decision to award the project to the Chinese company with a dodgy record in Nepal and blacklisted in other countries was widely condemned. The subsequent Sher Bahadur Deuba government on November 13, 2017 had revoked the decision to award the contract to CGGC.
It then decided to award the project to the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA). It had formed a committee under National Planning Commission (NPC) Vice Chairman Swarnim Wagle and including finance and energy secretaries, and Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) governor and managing director of NEA to study about investment arrangements.
But the then KP Sharma Oli government again revoked the decision taken by the then Deuba government and again decided to award the project to CGGC without free competition on September 23, 2018.
Former prime minister (PM) Bhattarai had then alleged that Oli, the then CPN Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Nepali Congress (NC) President Deuba shared a bribe of Rs 9 billion among them to award the project to CGGC.
But the Deuba government has again decided to develop the project with domestic investment as per the recommendation of the Wagle-led committee
