From eKantipur.com – Nepal’s No.1 News Portal:
It has been 12 years since the World Bank dropped its support for the massive and costly Arun III Hydroelectric Project in Nepal in response to local and international criticism. Today, Indian companies are bidding to construct Arun III and the Asian Development Bank and Chinese financial institutions are considering financing an even larger dam project on the Seti River in western Nepal that, like the ill-fated Arun project, brings few benefits to local people and exports all the power to India.
The US$1.2 billion West Seti Hydroelectric project is being planned and built by the Australian Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC), funded by Chinese banks, and its electricity transferred to India. Nepal will receive just 10 percent of the project’s revenues in exchange for displacing more than 12,000 farmers (the most for any hydropower dam in Nepal) and bearing the project’s environmental destruction. [Full Text]
