The Association of Independent Power Producers, Nepal (IPPAN) submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on the first day under the program of the pre-announced movement.
A team led by IPPA Executive Chairman Mohan Kumar Dangi met Prime Minister Oli at the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers office on Friday and submitted a memorandum with the message that there is no option to go on a strong protest without withdrawing the 'take and pay' provision announced in the budget.
Prime Minister Oli, understanding Ippan's memorandum, sat down with energy entrepreneurs on the topic of 'Tech and Pay' and discussed in detail Said to be discussed. He directed the secretariat to arrange a time for this on Sunday or Monday.
In the budget and program of the next financial year 2082/083 announced on 15th of June, Ippan has been protesting after it was mentioned that the policy of making power purchase agreement (PPA) will be adopted to balance between power generation and consumption and PPA will be done only according to the take and pay (take and pay) concept of the Run of the River (ROR) project .
In order to remove this item from the budget, Ippan met and discussed with various agencies for 3 weeks, but none of the agencies showed seriousness in addressing the demand.
Mohan Kumar Dangi, coordinator of the movement committee and executive chairman of IPPAN, said that the memorandum was submitted to Prime Minister Olil on the first day of the pre-announced movement. In the first phase of the movement, IPPAN will meet the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Energy and submit a memorandum, send an SMS to withdraw the 'Tech and Pay' PPA, send an SMS to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Chief Whip of all political parties, and jointly issue a statement with all the private sector organizations.
Ippan has mentioned in the memorandum that if the government does not withdraw the said provision, the construction work of more than 350 projects with a capacity of 17 thousand 117 megawatts will be stopped and the 66 billion 22 million rupees spent during the project study will also be lost and businessmen will come to the streets.
The government has brought this provision in the budget against the 'Energy Development Roadmap and Action Plan, 2081', with a plan to export 15,000 MW of electricity to India and Bangladesh by reaching 28,500 MW of electricity generation capacity in the next 10 years. Now, the Nepal Electricity Authority is doing PPA on a take-or-pay (take or pay) concept. This means that after the construction of the hydropower project, the Nepal Electricity Authority will purchase all the produced electricity.
'Take and pay' PPA is an arrangement to take electricity only if the authority deems it necessary. There is no guarantee that the Electricity Authority will purchase the electricity produced. Therefore, not only banks and financial institutions do not invest loans in PPAs in 'Take and Pay', promoters also do not invest in businesses that do not have market certainty.
In such a situation, since the private sector cannot invest more in Nepal's hydropower, the possibility of energy crisis in the country has increased due to the exodus of the private sector, which has freed the country from load-shedding by producing 3,000 megawatts of electricity in a short time .
