A plan to import an additional 20 megawatts of electricity from Nepal to Bangladesh has stalled for now. Citing a shortfall in transmission-line capacity, India has suspended the approval process. As a result, under the existing agreement, Bangladesh will receive only 40 megawatts of electricity from June 15.
Officials of Nepal’s energy sector confirmed this on Sunday (June 14). Officials said India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) held up the approval because of limits on the transmission line’s capacity.
They also said a new tripartite agreement would have to be amended or signed to import this additional electricity. A decision by the Nepal-India energy secretary-level joint steering committee would also be required.
Normally, during the monsoon season Nepal exports its surplus electricity to India and Bangladesh. In winter, however, Nepal itself imports electricity from India.
At a JSC meeting held in Dhaka on November 27, 2025, an in-principle decision was taken to raise electricity exports by an additional 20 megawatts alongside the existing 40 megawatts. The two sides also agreed at that meeting to move forward with the necessary legal process.
Under the plan, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) asked India’s NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Limited (NVVN) to make the necessary arrangements to supply the additional 20 megawatts. But NVVN later said the India-Bangladesh 1,000-megawatt-capacity transmission line had no further scope or capacity to carry this additional electricity.
Tark Bahadur Thapa, director of NEA’s power trade department, said only 40 megawatts of electricity would be exported to Bangladesh this time. Although the tripartite agreement for the additional 20 megawatts has not been finalized, we had begun the process through NVVN to India’s CEA under the previous arrangement, he said. But they informed us that the transmission line has no capacity to carry an additional 20 megawatts, he added.
Complexity of the tripartite agreement
Officials connected with the sector said a fresh decision at the upcoming Nepal-India JSC and joint working group (JWG) meetings would be needed to resolve this complexity. But the timeline for these meetings has not yet been set.
Earlier, at a JSC meeting on January 5, 2024, Nepal received in-principle approval to export 40 megawatts of electricity to Bangladesh using India’s transmission system. Later, on October 3 that year, a tripartite agreement was signed between NEA, NVVN and the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB). Under that agreement, arrangements were made to supply 40 megawatts of electricity to Bangladesh each year from June 15 to November 15.
In the first phase, electricity from Nepal reached Bangladesh for only 12 hours on November 15, 2024. This electricity travels via Nepal’s Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur 400 kV line to India, and from there reaches Bangladesh via the Baharampur-Bheramara 400 kV transmission line. At present this electricity is being supplied from Nepal’s Trishuli and Chilime hydropower plants.
Power trade and financial accounts
Nepal sells electricity to Bangladesh at 6.40 U.S. cents per unit. The price for the additional 20 megawatts was also to remain the same. While Nepal’s power trade with India is in Indian rupees, transactions with Bangladesh are in U.S. dollars.
In the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, Nepal exported a total of 20,995 crore rupees worth of electricity to India and Bangladesh, compared with 13,103 crore rupees in the same period of the previous fiscal year. Nepal has so far received approval to export a total of 1,165 megawatts of electricity to the two countries.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report