Parliament approves govt decision on West Seti

The Parliament Natural Resource Committee has approved the decision of the government to award the 750-MW strong West Seti hydropower project to Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC).

The parliamentary decision has opened the door for starting construction of the mega power project, which is designed to export power to India on commercial basis.

Meanwhile, the parliamentary committee has instructed the government to call open competition when awarding other big projects like Arun III and Upper Karnali.

The government had given permission to Australian company SMEC to build West Seti without competition.

The parliamentary committee has also instructed the government to try its best to get 10 percent free electricity from the West Seti project. As per the understanding, the SMEC will give either 10 percent free energy or equivalent amount of money to the government. The SMEC has said it could build a separate 75 MW project if Nepal wants free power since it finds there will be technical difficulty in providing 10 percent power from the West Seti project itself due to lack of transmission facilities in the project site, which is located in Doti district. nepalnews.com sd Jul 19 07