Nepal is facing a paradox situation in terms of electricity supply:

• It holds an economic potential for more than 40 GW of hydropower capacity that would be more than enough to supply 10 times or more its future consumption even on the long term, but at the same time Nepal economy is presently suffering large scale power cuts because of lack of generation capacity and lack of transmission capacity.

• The lack of transmission capacity does not seem at first glance to be a technical problem nor an economic problem, but rather an organizational and possibly a legal problem in the sense that Right of Ways are not obtained in due time for transmission lines to be built as scheduled.

In this context and given the huge potential for exporting hydropower to neighbouring countries (primarily India and Bangladesh), this Transmission Master Plan project aims at dealing with the double challenge of solving the implementation issues of Transmission lines (Rights of Ways) and optimizing a long term grid for supplying Nepal and export load.