Parties accord high priority to energy

The major political parties today vowed to prioritise developing energy to meet the increasing demand.

 Addressing an interaction organised by Independent Power Producers' Association-Nepal (IPPAN) here today, former ministers underlined the need to forge national consensus to develop the hydropower in the country.

"Nepali Congress aims at ending the current power outage in the country within the next three years," said former water resources minister and Nepali Congress (NC) central member Laxman Ghimire. The party also aims at utilising immense potentiality of water resources to generate power also for export purpose.

"CPN-UML emphasises on developing small hydropower projects for domestic consumption while mega projects for export purposes," said
former water resources minister and CPN-UML leader Pradeep Nepal, on the occasion. His party CPN-UML had obstructed the construction of Arun III that the World Bank was planning to develop. But after almost a decade Arun III has been resurrected and Sutlej Jal Vidyut Nigam – an Indian state-owned hydropower company – is going to develop it.

The country can be economically prosperous, if the abundant water resources can be utilised through political consensus, he added.

Likewise, a leader of Terai Madhes Democratic Party Ratneshwor Kayastha, on the occasion, underlined the need to develop storage-based hydropower projects to meet the energy demand.

Energy has become one of the important agenda in the election campaign for the political parties as the country is still reeling under eight hours of scheduled power outage hitting not only the industrialisation of the country but also making the country depended on imported fossil fuel.