It was expected for over a year and now it has happened. All users will pay an average of 10 percent more for power from mid-September onwards (for power use in the month of Bhadra). The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has also published rates for Time of Day (ToD) power use, something it began half-heartedly last year and has not been able to aggressively promote so far. ToD metering is available only to "medium" scale users and not households.

Even though the ToD idea is a sound way to increase end-use efficiency, the plan has not taken off because the NEA wants to purchase meters itself-for the well-known benefits of making bulk purchases-instead of allowing customers to do so and certifying those meters.

The recent tariff increases are related to donor demands on the NEA to improve the rate of return on investment, self-financing ratio, and revenues, in order to be allowed to use a loan for rural electrification. The Asian Development Bank (ADB), which is giving the loan for rural electrification, is generally singled out for demanding the tariff hikes-whether it has the right to do so is a different issue. But economists say the NEA's tariffs have less to do with the bank's demands and more with its own lack of business-skills. The ADB, they say, is simply doing what banks do to clients who don't know how to run a business.

The electricity we don't use during off-peak hours is wasted because it cannot be stored-the NEA will not consider selling it at, say, half the present rates to daytime users, and increasing the volume of sales, and so restricts ToD metering to a small group of users, despite the growth of this market segment. The battery-run Safa tempos, for instance, could be ideal customers for the NEA's off-peak power. Safa operators have tried to interest the NEA-and failed. NEA staffers said there was no point because Safa tempos aren't important enough. "The Safas contribute only Rs 30 million to the NEA's roughly Rs 9 billion revenue," said one official who did not wish to be named.

As for households, many are using less power than they used to, having switched to alternative fuels for cooking and heating. Their pay-off from the NEA: higher tariffs for less kilowatt/ hour usage.