Seven Indian firms in fray for Nepal’s first recycling plant

KATHMANDU - As Nepal seeks to build its first waste recycling plant in partnership with the private sector, Indians are leading the pack for the 20-year project with seven of the eight technically qualified bidders being from the subcontinent.

The local development ministry said six Indian joint ventures with Nepali partners are in the fray as well as a single Indian company, the Hyderabad-based Ramky Enviro Engineers that was behind India’s first integrated hazardous waste management facility under public-private partnership in 1998.

Amit Mittal’s Gurgaon-based A2Z is bidding in partnership with prominent Nepali industrial house Chaudhury Group’s CG Energy Infrastructure while a scion of the Chaudhury Group, Arun Chaudhury, who also heads the Nepal India Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and his CG Infra are vying with Indian partner International Leasing and Financial Services. IL&FS has already entered Nepal’s infrastructure and hydropower sector.

Mumbai’s Hanjer Biotech Energies has teamed up with another well-known Nepali industrial house, the Triveni Group that bid successfully for Nepal’s first private telecom service project with major Indian telecom players like MTNL. SMPL Infra Ltd, which has also forayed into Singapore and Indonesia, is bidding with Nepali remittance company IME while Pune’s Bharat Vikas Group has two Nepali partners, Greenfield Waste Management and KRYSS International. Also in the reckoning is Navi Mumbai’s Hydroair Tectonic with Nepal’s Kasturi Trade Link.

The lone bidder without an Indian partner is Finnish Communication OY in association with POYRY, BIOSTE and Nepal’s Organic Village.

The final financial bidding is scheduled Sunday.

The contract will also include collecting and disposing waste, a job till now handled by the municipal authorities, who have been increasingly under fire.

Kathmandu produces about 600 tonnes of waste daily and the recycling is expected to lead to the manufacture of compost and bio-energy. The contract will be awarded on the basis of the tariff the bidders would levy, the royalty they would pay the government of Nepal from the products manufactured from the waste and the period for which they are willing to sign the contract.

Nepal is looking at a partnership for 20 to 30 years while the recycling plant is expected to be operational within three years.

Daily waste disposal remains one of the most chaotic jobs in Nepal with residents of the landfill sites regularly opposing dumping of waste.

Garbage piling up for a week to 10 days is a regular occurrence now along with fears of an epidemic, like cholera.

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)