It takes 73 days and needs to fulfill six procedures in Nepal to get electricity connection, according to 'Getting Electricity - A Pilot Study by the Doing Business Project' by World Bank.
However, four procedures to obtain an electricity connection is enough in Iceland that takes only 22 days whereas in Afghanistan it takes 424 days.
Getting Electricity -- the two-and-a-half-year project -- presents findings on the kinds of constraints entrepreneurs around the world face in getting access to electricity and illustrates patterns in connection processes. The study also tracks all the procedures, the time, and the cost required for a business to obtain an electricity connection for a newly constructed building.
However, in Nepal the cost of not having the electricity is higher than the cost of connection as the country reels under long hours of power outage. "The industries here have not been able to utilise their full capacity due to irregular electricity supply," said an industrialist.
World Bank Enterprise Surveys in 89 economies show that firms consider electricity one of the biggest constraints to their business. The constraints stem from inadequacies in several aspects of electricity service-access to electricity, availability of electricity and reliability of supply-as well as from cost.
"Electricity matters for private businesses, along with other infrastructure services such as roads, water and telecommunications. Where the quality and accessibility of infrastructure services are good, they encourage investment, productivity and growth. But where they are poor, companies' productivity and growth suffer," according to the report.
Many businesses lack access to electricity connections and so are prevented from moving into higher-value-added activities that rely on electricity-based technologies. In 2005, according to the International Energy Agency, more than a quarter of the world's population lacked access to electricity. South Asia has the lowest electrification rates.
Businesses also care about the cost of both the electricity connection and the electricity supply-because electricity-related expenditures eat up a significant share of their revenue.
Managers responding to World Bank Enterprise Surveys estimated that on average their spending on electricity amounts to four per cent of their annual sales-while that on all other infrastructure services like fuel, communication services and water combined accounts for 6.4 per cent.
Among the 140 economies surveyed for Getting Electricity, Ukraine ranks in the bottom 10 on the number of procedures required to connect a new customer to electricity. Economies such as Denmark, Germany, Japan and Mauritius make it much easier for businesses to connect to electricity. The pilot study sheds light on the interactions of businesses with distribution utilities. In doing so it covers only a small part of electricity service for the 140 economies surveyed. The survey has detailed the efficiency and cost of the services provided to commercial customers by distribution utilities, the complexity of procedures, and the resources expended by businesses in obtaining a connection.
"In the 10 economies with the fewest procedures, the process of obtaining an electricity connection takes only 56 days on average and in the 10 economies with the most procedures, it is 215 days," the report says.
The study also finds that connection delays increase where opportunities are missed to streamline approvals with other public agencies; where customers face multiple procedures related to the quality and safety of the internal wiring; where utilities do not have the materials needed to connect customers readily available.
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