LPG supply still inadequate

Post Report

KATHMANDU, Jan 4 - Despite repeated claims by Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) that supply of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) is adequate, the market is still wriggling under acute shortage. The failure to meet skyrocketing domestic demand of LPG by the present supply is the main reason behind continuous crunch.

Statistics provided by NOC revealed that LPG gas supply is continuously soaring. Total LPG import during December scaled to thirty-five hundred tons, whereas the supply only three months ago was hardly 3,000 tons. (See Box)

Ashok Singh, Marketing Manager of Himalayan Petro Chemicals (HP gas), informed that the overall monthly demand of LPG has gone up by almost 1,250 tons per month, to touch 4000 tons per month, within the last three months. The latest hike in the price of kerosene has caused a bump in the demand of LPG by 500 tons, due to shift of kerosene users to gas. Similarly, onset of the winter season pushed up the demand by another 500 tons and entry of gas operated micro-buses and three-wheelers contributed to another 250 tons monthly.

"The current supply of LPG is far below demand and adequate supply is unlikely to occur in the near future," he said.

Other private gas stations also share similar views. "As almost all the domestic gas stations are running without nominal stock, a bulk supply of 1000 - 1500 tons is essential to break the current acute shortage," said Ajit Kumar Jha , Chief Engineer of Nepal Gas.

NOC officials accept that demand of LPG has dramatically hiked in recent months and also claim that they have taken necessary steps to upgrade current supply. Beside the recently increased quota of 3,500 tons per month from Barauni gas filling station, NOC has started importing extra 200 tons from Mathura gas station from January.

However, private gas distributors argue that the increased supply will not be sufficient to cope with the present swelling demand. "There would be short of at least 300 tons monthly even if NOC Supplies 3,700 tons," Jha said.

However, Madan Raj Sharma, Executive Director of NOC, argues that the 3,700 tons would be enough for domestic consumption. "After the end of winter, the entire domestic demand will slump to 3,000 tons and there would be surplus of 700 tons per month."

NOC is planning to store the surplus gas in its own proposed bottling plant with storage capacity of 3,000 tons, which is to be constructed near Janakpur at the cost of Rs 350 million.

"Since the cumulative storage capacity of private stations is only a little above 800 tons, NOC has decided to built it own storage facility," Sharma said.

NOC and other related authorities have blamed private gas refilling stations and their dealers for the present scarcity of cooking gas. While NOC claims that it has been supplying the demanded LPG to dealers, consumers have to stand in queue for hours for a single cylinder.

As per the present understanding, NOC provides Rs 15 per cylinder for local transportation and another Rs 15 as dealers commission in its retail price putting the total cost for consumers at Rs 550 per cylinder.

Sharma blames that refilling stations are enjoying extra profit of Rs 30 by selling straight to consumers bypassing the dealers. However, private stations strongly refute the allegation and say that they are forced to sell LPG from the station directly to the consumers. "We want LPG to be distributed through our local dealers, but, in reality, whenever scarcity hits, hundreds of people come to our station and pressurize us to sell gas. We are forced to do so," said Jha.

Storage Capacity And Imports In December

Total 835 3265.32
Source: NOC

Nepali text-to-speech synthesiser developed

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LALITPUR, Jan 4 - Experts have developed a computer program for a of Nepali text-to-speech synthesiser - a program that converts typed matter to sound - for the first time, claim experts. The new development would enable the computer users to hear typed or e-mailed message over the headphone connected to their PCs.

The program is expected to be very useful for the blind, inorder to access to computer messages and e-mails. It will also help busy people by reading electronic books and newspapers out to them. Through speech synthesiers were available for most major languages, there was no such facility for Nepali, a language written in Devnagari script.

Speaking at a talk program on Nepali Text-to-Speech Synthesiser, Sameer Maskey, one of the developers of the program said his team faced a major problem in developing the program in the absence of electronic phonetic dictionary of the Nepali language.

Similarly, lack of Nepali diphone database and lack of uniformity in Nepali font were other problems face by the developers. In order to fulfil the need the team has compiled a manual dictionary of Nepali which has 1,250 words.

Due to lack of e-phonetic dictionary of the Nepali language, the sound quality of spoken messages except for a limited domain is below par, which the experts hope to overcome by developing the required dictionary.

Likewise, the team of the enthusiastic youths is making efforts towards developing Digital Dialogue System (DDS) which allows the computer users to talk to the computer, according to Maskey.

Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (RONAST) organized the half-day talk program here on Wednesday, which was participated in by around 25 people.

WTO poses threat to bio-diversity

By Bhaskar Sharma

KATHMANDU, Jan 4 - Accession of Nepal into the World Trade Organization (WTO) would certainly open a wide number of opportunities, but would also pose innumerable challenges. While the benefits of joining the WTO should not be understated, at the same time, the threat that WTO agreements can invite for Nepal too should not remain unanalysed.

Though WTO pushes for a global free and fair trade, promoting liberalization and widening market access of goods and services, how far it views the interests of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and developing countries is certainly doubtful. The reason: existence of a number of agreements under the WTO regime that directly repudiate the interests of LDCs.

Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights, or more commonly known as TRIPs agreement, is the most contentious and controversial agreement ever signed. This is one of the agreements under WTO that developing countries and LDCs were vehemently against, but ultimately got through due to strong pressure and lobby of the North (developed countries).

Is the TRIPs agreement compatible to the interests of the poorer economies? Or is it just a decoy used by the developed countries to pursue their vested interests? This article tries to analyse and bring to light the potential impact that TRIPs can have on Nepal. The emphasis here is laid on the implications of the patenting provisions under the TRIPs agreement on Nepalese bio-diversity.

The need to properly understand and access the probable impact of TRIPs agreement gets more important considering the forthcoming accession of Nepal into the WTO. Nepal being an agro-based economy, impact of TRIPs agreement on bio-diversity is more vital. The latest step taken by the government to conduct a study on the impact of TRIPs on Nepal is more than welcome.

"The government has asked private parties to carry out a detailed study on the impact of TRIPs agreement on Nepal, and the report to likely to come in within the next three months," says Jib Raj Koirala, Chief of the WTO Cell, Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies.

While TRIPs encompasses rights related to intellectual property, including patenting, copyrights and industrial designs, among others, its impact on bio-diversity in the long run can be disastrous unless steps are initiated immediately.

The threat to bio-diversity is more pronounced because TRIPs contains provisions that are directly in confrontation with the ideals of bio-diversity conservation, sustainable use and benefit sharing envisaged by Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Brazil 1992. Nepal has also ratified CBD and is signed by 177 countries, except USA. Once a party to the WTO, it is TRIPs that will prevail and not CBD, which LDCs and developing economies do not want.

"Though the WTO calls for free and fair trade, TRIPs in fact restricts it by providing monopoly rights. It contradicts the CBD provisions and it made into the WTO only because Trans-National Companies (TNCs) wanted that way," says Ratnakar Adhikari, General Secretary of South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment (SAWTEE). "Exclusive marketing rights provided by Patent Act under TRIPs regime will only lead to exploitation of farmers, directly or indirectly."

The argument put forward by Adhakari seems valid since TRIPs agreement was sponsored by TNCs based in the North with tacit objectives of maximising their profits. TRIPs allows to legally pirate the indigenous knowledge, tradition and practices and native resources of the South, and make mega profits out of it for the next twenty years, the duration of the validity of patents under the WTO. And add to it, TNCs would not need to compensate the traditional farm communities for the original research.

There are ample cases where indigenous resources of the South have been patented by TNCs of the North. One of the glaring examples of bio-piracy of our indigenous resource is that of Sarpagandha, a plant used by traditional healers and indigenous communities in Nepal and other Asian countries, for the treatment of snakebite.

In addition, when US based companies patented at least 65 different properties of neem and two properties of bitter gourd, the real owners of these plants could not contest them in the respective courts in a well argued manner. The reason was simply because of the lack of enough documentary evidence.

Nepal is known to be a home to a number of rare species of herbs and medicinal plants. As an example, Taxus baccata, known to possess qualities to fight cancer, is found aplenty in the Himalayan kingdom. The plant is presently in high demand in the international markets. What will Nepal get if TNCs and MNCs tomorrow patent it?

Another more important threat relates to seeds. What will happen to a country like Nepal if TNCs, after Nepal joins the WTO, patents one of our traditional seeds and force us to use their terminator seeds. Terminator seeds, which are unable to reproduce, would only be a tool for TNCs to mint money. Charging monopoly price, TNCs would then be able to exploit over 90 per cent of the Nepalese who are farmers.

The threats are immense. Not only to farmers, but to the least developed world as a whole. Monoculture and terminator technologies can later prove as a tool for the North to exploit the South. So what can be done? - question arises.

Hence it is imperative that the government take immediate steps to protect its agriculture and bio-diversity. The only thing that it can presently do is to initiate a system of documenting products of Nepalese bio-diversity. The system can be similar to that recently initiated by India, whereby Community Bio-diversity Register is used for documentation at the village level, the community knowledge, skills and techniques of biological resources. Starting right away, damage can be minimized to a great extent.