With the
southern neighbour benefiting more from the project’s development, particularly
in the area of irrigation and flood control,
“India has agreed to invest more but we are yet
to reach a concrete agreement on additional benefits the southern neighbour
will get and extra investment it will have to make,” said Madhu Bhetuwal,
joint-secretary at the energy ministry, who is also a member of the Nepali
delegation. “But there will be equal sharing of electricity.”
The
understanding reached on the matter will have to be included in the Detailed
Project Report (DPR) of the 6,480MW plant
to be built on the bordering
Bhetuwal said
that the experts’ meeting also instructed WAPCOS Ltd to revise the DPR in line
with the understanding reached in the fourth and earlier meetings and submit it
within 15 days.
“After the
understanding is included in the DPR, we will try to reach a final deal on the
exact benefits each side will get and investment to be made by each side based
on their benefits,” he said. “We also reached an understanding to hold the next
meeting right after the WAPCOS submits the revised DPR.”
Nepali
officials say that even though two countries would equally benefit from the
hydropower,
Both
sides agreed to design the project so as to ensure maximum total net benefit.
All benefits accruing to both the parties with the development of the project
in the forms of power, irrigation, and flood control shall be assessed, article 3 of the treaty says.
“The cost of the project shall be borne by the parties in proportion to the
benefits accruing to them. Both the parties shall jointly endeavour to mobilise
the finance required for the implementation of the project.”
Nepali
officials clarified that Indian compensation for more benefit is not related to
existing higher use of water from the Mahakali river. Article 3 of the Mahakali
Treaty clearly states that two countries have equal entitlement to the
utilisation of the waters of the Mahakali river without prejudice to their
respective existing uses of the waters of the Mahakali.
At present,
“There will be
equal sharing of water, leaving aside the existing use of water by the two
countries as per the treaty,” said Energy Secretary Dinesh Ghimire. “Now, we
are talking about benefits to both countries after the development of
Pancheshwar which is also skewed towards
The
understanding reached in the meeting of the team of experts on determining the
benefits and compensations to be made by the beneficiary party, is a step
towards the development of the project which has been in limbo for nearly three
decades since the signing of the Mahakali Treaty.
The meeting of
the team of experts was held after its deadline was extended for six months by
the meeting of the governing body (board
of directors) of the Pancheshwar Development Authority in the first week of July.
The
meetings of two mechanisms were held after the two countries agreed to finalise
the DPR of the Pancheshwar within three months during the visit of
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to
“The Pancheshwar
Development Authority shall submit the finalised DPR to both governments and
the two governments and their relevant entities shall take the lead in
arranging finance for the project,” the Nepali Embassy in
But concluding
the DPR turned out to be a Herculean task for both the sides as there were many
disagreements. One of the key disagreements was over determining the formula of
how much benefit each country would receive from the project and how the
country taking more benefit would compensate for those benefits.
Through the
earlier negotiations, the two sides, however, brought down the number of
differences drastically after the WAPCOS submitted the DPR draft.
“There were more
than 500 unresolved issues, which came down to
127 in the past negotiations,” said Bhetuwal, the joint-secretary.
“These are mostly related to determining the benefits for each side and costs
involved while there are some design and safety related differences too and we
have tried to reach an understanding on resolving those differences this time.”
With both countries failing to make concrete efforts, years have been spent to
reach an understanding on the DPR. The fourth meeting of the experts’ team took
place four years after the third
meeting held in
Earlier,
the meeting of the governing body (Board of Directors) of Pancheshwar
Development Authority had decided to send permanent members to the executive
committee of the Authority, changing the tradition of only sending officials on
additional duties.
“Permanent
representation in the executive committee will help expedite preparatory works
for the project,” Bhetuwal told the
Post earlier. Currently, the authority’s chief executive is from
The Pancheshwar
project was conceived under the Mahakali Treaty between
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