Kathmandu, Sep 24 (IANS) Power-starved India is aiming to get 60,000 MW of additional electricity from hydro projects by 2025, most of it through domestic resources, the country’s Minister of State for Power Jairam Ramesh said here Wednesday.Ramesh, who spent three days here on an official visit to Nepal for a power summit and held talks with key Nepali officials and ministers, said India’s long-term plan was to generate 50,000 MW of hydro power within the country and to get 10,000 MW more from Bhutan by 2025.

Of the power to be generated in India, 50 percent, he said, would be produced from the water-resources-rich state of Arunachal Pradesh alone. The rest will come from some new hydel projects in Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jammu and Kashmir.

India has already begun buying power from Bhutan after helping it develop hydro-power projects that are generating 1,400 MW, with an additional 1,100 MW in the pipeline.

In addition, New Delhi has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Myanmar for developing projects in the Chindwin basin, of which the most immediate is the 1,200 MW Tamanthi project.

It is also working on two large transmission projects in Afghanistan and collaborating with Sri Lanka on grid-interconnection, as well as to set up a 500 MW thermal plant in Trincomalee.

Technical studies are also on to effect the interconnection of power grids of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries with a view to transferring around 9 billion KWHS annually from India to Bangladesh.

If Nepal is able to implement its new Maoist government’s pledge to generate 10,000 MW in the next decade and trade with India, power flow in the region would go up.

The minister said India was also keen to switch over from the present “undesirable” 25:75 hydel-thermal mix to 40:60 over the next 25 years.

Also, as part of its drive to boost trade in the region, India is upgrading four border trade points along the 1,800 km India-Nepal border, seven more on the India-Bangladesh border and one each along its borders with Pakistan, Myanmar and China.