January 30, 2002

Kathmandu: The country needs to be clear on many water resources issues before sitting with the donor community at the Nepal Development Forum meeting next month, experts and officials said at an interaction programme here today.

Among many such issues Dipak Gyawali, a noted water expert, raised, one was the case of irrigation. “The policy paper on irrigation development is itself confused on whether irrigation is a social or economic good,” he said. “The paper also has different development strategies contradicting one another.”

The government for the last two weeks had organised a series of consultative meetings on the different area policy documents to be presented at the NDF meet, slated for February 4 through 7 next month.

Gyawali also stressed that the policy document on water supply had put to risk other water supply projects in favour of Melamchi Project– the government’s top priority project that aims to pipe in 170 million litres of Melamchi River water in a day through a 28-kilometre tunnel from Sindhupalchowk District. “The policy clearly states that if donors opt to fund Melamchi only, other water supply related projects may suffer.”

In what it calls a major implication, the policy document states that other projects would not have to suffer if the Melamchi Project gets extra budget. “However, if that does not happen, other projects need to be curtailed.”

If that is the case, suggested Gyawali, the government should float bonds to collect capital for the Melamchi Project and ensure donors’ funding for other water-related projects.

Other priority projects receiving donors’ assistance include Small Towns Water Supply and Sanitation Project, Community Water Supply Project, Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Fund Development Board, among others.

Ratna Samsar Shrestha, Senior Chartered Accountant working in the field of hydropower, said that the country first needs to be clear whether it is rich in water resources or hydropower. “I ask this question because power can be produced from many other sources — solar, wind and the like. But there is no alternative for water resources.”

Elaborating on his argument, Shrestha said that the idea of allowing foreign investors to build big hydropower projects and export electricity is not much in Nepal’s interest. “From this exercise, both power and money will be going out. In that case, how can we say that electricity’s export would help increase Nepal’s GDP?”

Even the officialdom has joined the confused bandwagon, according to Upendra Dev Bhatta, an official with the Nepal Electricity Authority. “The way we have been treating the 144 MW Kali Gandaki Hydropower Project shows that things are not clear in the officialdom.”

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The biggest hydropower project of NEA, the power plant is expected to begin operation very soon, after several postponed deadlines for its completion.

Even as NEA has efficient manpower, they are not clear since rumour is swirling that the authority would be privatised, Bhatta said. The policy document on electricity sector development states that NEA would be unbundled into different components responsible for power generation, transmission, and distribution. It also clearly says that the authority would be commercialised.

Dwelling on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, the government has devised to execute priority projects, Shiva Kumar Sharma, an official with the Ministry of Water Resources, said that the idea is to minimise the time-gap projects have to face due to the five year plan. “The MTEF will minimise the gap to three years and that would be good to revise and fund the projects.”

The interaction programme was jointly organised by Nepal Forum for Environmental Journalists and Water Power Analysis and Investigation Group.