KATHMANDU, Feb 12 - India's Ministry of Power is positive on providing Nepal 40 megawatt (MW) of electricity, which Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) is looking to import from the Duhabi-Kataiya transmission link, NEA's Managing Director Arjun Kumar Karki said on Monday.

After India's leading power trader PTC India Ltd told Nepal last month that it would be able to provide the northern neighbor only 15 MW of the 40 MW India had promised last

year, effort was initiated at the government level to procure power.

"Indian government is ready to provide us the full forty megawatts," Karki told parliament's Finance Committee. "We can import power from Duhabi-Kataiya transmission link," he said. Nepal is already importing 50 MW from the link based on the power exchange agreement between the two countries. Still, consumers are facing up to eight hours of daily power cuts.

On Monday, NEA also wrote to PTC India Ltd requesting it to supply 20 MW of additional power from Tanakpur.

"We have found that it is technically feasible to import an additional twenty megawatts from Tanakpur," Karki said.

House panel for customs waiver on CFLs

Lawmaker and Former Finance Minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari, who chaired the House panel meeting on Monday, told NEA that the panel would ask the Ministry of Finance to waive off customs on import of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs), which use only a quarter of the power used by traditional light bulbs to provide the same degree of illumination.

"We will ask the ministry to waive off customs for CFLs and also to provide a revolving fund to NEA to make consumers switch from traditional lighting bulbs to CFLs," said Adhikari.

For demand management, NEA is immediately starting distribution of leaflets to consumers, through its billing staff, explaining the benefits of CFLs as well as a scheme to allow consumers to switch to CFLs with zero initial investment.

NEA has proposed that it be provided a revolving fund of Rs 500 million so that it can buy CFLs, install them in people's homes for free, and pay CFL suppliers in installments from consumers' bills. Switching to CFLs will reduce electricity consumption of individual households. NEA will continue to charge consumers an average of their past electricity bills for as long as the margin between their past bills and actual consumption do not pay back all the installments of CFL.

The NEA has also asked the house panel to raise customs on power inefficient inverters, make it mandatory for factories not to operate during peak hours, and to  expand the adoption of CFLs in government offices and street lamps.

Proposal to supply 250 MW to Nepal

As a longer-term solution to Nepal's power crisis, India's Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS), which is partnering with NEA to build four high-voltage transmission highways across the Nepal-India border, recently proposed to NEA to supply up to 250 MW to Nepal from a 500 MW thermal plant it is setting up in India, Karki told the house panel.

"I Think this is a workable proposal," said Karki.

However, the arrangement will come into effect only by 2010 end as it will take three years to set up the plant.

IL&FS has proposed to supply power at IRs 2 to IRs 2.50 per unit.

According to NEA's forecast, the country will face progressively worse power cuts for at least the next five years, after which projects in the pipeline are expected to start plugging the demand-supply gap.