Minister for Energy, Water Resources, and Irrigation Shakti Bahadur Basnet has said that there is a huge gap between our needs and available resources.

Speaking at a meeting of the Infrastructure Development Committee of the House of Representatives (HoR) on Thursday, Minister Basnet argued that there are challenges in meeting an expected target for a lack of coordination among the concerned agencies.

On the occasion, Minister Basnet stated that the government was making efforts in a planned manner to increase domestic consumption of power. “We are going to approve a plan of action from the council of ministers to increase domestic consumption. Only the surplus power would be exported to India,” he shared.

Likewise, Managing Director of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) Kulman Ghising said as high as 95 percent of the total households in the country have access to power supply, which was around 60 percent five years ago.

Ghising lamented for lack of a sufficient budget for electrical infrastructures. He was of the argument that Rs 50 billion is needed to replace the old wooden electric poles with new ones across the country.