KATHMANDU, March 5 - Even as Nepal scrambles frantically for funds to develop power projects and ward off the grim prospect of up to 17 hours of power outage daily in a few years' time, there has been zero progress on the 240 MW Naumure project, which India is willing to build for free.

During a power summit in Kathmandu in September 2006, Indian Ambassador Shiv Shanker Mukherjee had promised that India would build a hydropower project of up to 100 MW size under grant assistance for Nepal. In October the same year, the Indian embassy wrote to the Ministry of Water Resources (M0WR) that it was willing to increase the size of the grant project to 250 MW.

Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) chose a storage project - the 240 MW Naumure on the West Rapti. According to an Indian embassy official, the first joint field visit and discussions were conducted in January 2007, after which "it was agreed that the Nepali side would determine the project scope and prepare the terms of reference [ToR] for undertaking field investigation and other studies."

So far, the Indian embassy has not received anything from the Nepalese side in this regard.

Since mid-2007, MoWR has thrice forwarded proposals to the Ministry of Finance to send a formal request to the Indian government to commence work on the project. The third proposal is still at the Finance Ministry.

"We sent the last proposal to the Ministry of Finance three weeks ago," said Anup Kumar Upadhyay, MoWR joint-secretary.

"We are sending the proposal back to the Ministry of Water Resources soon," said Bhuwan Karki, under-secretary at the Finance Ministry who looks after hydropower and roads. 

Why the ding-dong and why is it taking so long for the request to reach the Indian government? Is it sheer incompetence or a complete lack of drive that is stalling the project?

According to Upadhyay, after Naumure was chosen, it turned out the Department of Irrigation had once conducted a survey to develop it into an irrigation project, while Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) did its survey to develop it into a hydropower project.

"It took time for us to reconcile the irrigation and hydropower components," Upadhyay said. "We concluded that apart from the two components, a new study on the multipurpose project also needed to incorporate the building of a re-regulating dam at Bhalubang," he said. 

The Finance Ministry says it is sending the Naumure proposal back to MoWR as it also includes the building of cross border transmission links, whose modalities have not been clearly outlined in the proposal.

"Were it only a proposal for forwarding a request to the Indian government for building Naumure, the ministry would have already forwarded the request," said Karki. "But the border transmission component has complicated things."

However, according to Upadhyay, this shouldn't be a problem. "The proposal for Naumure and for the transmission links are two separate proposals," he said.

As things stand, it is still too early to ask when work on the project, that India is gifting Nepal, will actually commence?

The Naumure project site on the West Rapti River is at the boundary between Dang and Pyuthan districts. In addition to augmenting power availability during dry season, the storage project can provide irrigation benefits to dry areas in Kapilvastu and Banke districts.