Gautam Adani, the head of billionaire ports-to-mining conglomerate Adani Enterprises, met the Bhutanese King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck during the monarch’s ongoing week-long visit to India, according to a social media post by the Indian businessman on Wednesday.
“It was truly a honour to meet His Majesty King of Bhutan Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. It was nice to hear his vision of his Kingdom of Happiness. His thoughts on the aspirational Bhutan are indeed inspiring. We are excited to explore opportunities for the Adani Group to contribute to green infrastructure development for one of our happy and warm neighbours,” Adani wrote in a post on social media platform X.
The project, whose location is yet to be finalized, will be the Indian conglomerate’s first hydel power plant outside India.
India-Bhutan Hydel Power Cooperation
The India-Bhutan joint statement released after summit-level talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bhutanese King this week described hydro-power cooperation as an “important pillar of India-Bhutan bilateral economic partnership”.
India helped Bhutan develop its first hydel power project in 1961. Since then, Indian public sector companies have developed over 20 small and four large projects in the Himalayan nation.
While the Bhutanese government has traditionally remained cautious about the entry of Indian private companies in the hydro-power sector, it permitted a joint venture between privately-owned Tata Power and Bhutan’s state-backed Druk Green Power Corporation for the constriction of 126-megawatt Dagachhu plant, which became operational in 2015.
At the time, the project was seen hailed as a “model” for future and bigger public-private partnership projects.
The two governments achieved the goal of exporting 10,000 MW of surplus electricity from India to Bhutan in 2020. The governments are now looking to export Bhutan’s surplus energy to third countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal.