Nepal, July 27 -- For a country aiming for ambitious energy targets, Nepal's private power producers find themselves navigating a maze of regulatory halts and a massive gridlock. The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) currently faces a backlog of unsigned Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) totalling nearly 16,000 megawatts, leaving project developers in uncertainty. While the government previously introduced a policy framework to generate 15,000 MW, rapid exhaustion of designated quotas led to a prolonged suspension of standard PPAs since 2018/19. As developers call for policy consistency and open market access to allow private sector power trading, the urgency to address these systemic bottlenecks has never been higher.

The Post's Biken K ...