“Now, it will take at least six years to recoup the rest of the money spent on the project,” said Rajesh Kumar Pandey, chief of the project. Construction started in 2001 and was completed in 2008. The project has been generating 400,000 GW of electricity annually.

Normally, the payback period of a hydropower project is seven to eight years. However, since the Mid-Marsyangdi project’s costs have doubled, its payback period has also doubled. The run-off-the-river hydro project was built with a grant from the German government and investments from the Nepal government and the Nepal Electricity Authority.