Electricity price hike in the offing

While people are spending most of their time without electricity thanks to the long hours of load shedding, Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) is preparing to hike the tariff of electricity. Stating that the price of electricity has not been revised for many years despite high inflation and that NEA is incurring huge losses, it has proposed the government to revise its current tariff.

"There has been in inflation in all sectors, but the price of electricity has not increased for a long time," said Uttar Kumar Shrestha, Managing Director of NEA, addressing a function in Kathmandu Thursday.

According to NEA, it has already incurred a loss of NRs. 9 billion. A large part of this loss is due to its inability to collect the tariff from government offices and the former King.

Meanwhile, in what could be a big respite to people, NEA officials have indicated that load shedding hours could be reduced to up to 6 hours per day by February 26, 2009 and to 12 hours per day in a few days.

December and January saw load shedding for much higher hours than the forecast of NEA. Shrestha said the error was due to the unexpected floods in Koshi. "We had expected to import additional 80 MW from India, but we could not do that since the Koshi Tower was swept away by the floods." nepalnews.com ta Jan 30 09

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