Summary
- A four-member study committee estimates that irregularities in Nepal Television's satellite-bandwidth procurement caused NPR206,173,469 of loss.
- Its reported findings include contract extensions without fresh competition, payment before service, overbilling after service began, inflated cost estimates and the purchase of more bandwidth than required.
- The report is an administrative committee finding, not a court judgment: the vendor is unnamed in the available accounts, no individual liability has been adjudicated, and the ministry must decide what action follows.
Nepal Television's satellite bill is now carrying a number large enough to demand an accounting correction. A study committee appointed by the Ministry of Information and Communications has estimated that failures in bandwidth procurement caused the broadcaster a loss of NPR206,173,469. The committee submitted its report on 17 July to Information and Communications Minister Dr Bikram Timilsina, according to OnlineKhabar's Nepali-language account, corroborated by Republica.
That figure is the committee's estimate, not a sum established by a court or recovered from a supplier. The published accounts do not reproduce the full report, identify the satellite provider or carry responses from the broadcaster, the supplier or the officials whose decisions were examined. What they do provide is a detailed description of the procurement failures the committee says produced the loss.
Competition was replaced by continuity on the incumbent's terms
The committee was established on 5 June after complaints, reports from Nepal's Office of the Auditor General and questions of public concern. Nepal Television's own report on the appointment identifies engineer Dr Aabhas Maskey as chair, with Umesh Rupakheti, Tikaram Karki and Navin Kumar Mishra as members. Their mandate covered historic satellite-service agreements, service expansion, technology changes and equipment purchasing, with recommendations due in 21 days.
The resulting report, as summarised by the two news organisations, says Nepal Television extended contracts at existing rates without running a competitive process. It also says the broadcaster paid rent before service began, paid bills above the proper amount after service started, inflated cost estimates and bought more capacity than it required. In 2012, the committee says, a bidder that had failed the technical evaluation was nevertheless selected to provide the service.
Those findings describe an incentive problem as much as a compliance problem. Competition is the mechanism that tells a buyer whether bandwidth prices, capacity and contract terms still reflect the market. Extending an incumbent at old rates suppresses that price discovery. Paying before delivery transfers financing and performance risk from the supplier to the broadcaster. Ordering capacity beyond demonstrated need turns a resilience margin into a recurring cost. None of that alone proves an improper motive, but together the practices would make weak value for money difficult to detect and expensive to reverse.
A satellite near the end of its life increased the buyer's exposure
The committee also says Nepal Television agreed to buy another 10 MHz from the same provider when the satellite being used was approaching the end of its design life. The available summaries do not say whether service continued on that satellite, migrated elsewhere or received contractual protection against an early technical change. They therefore do not support a conclusion that the capacity itself failed.
They do show why the contracting decision mattered operationally. A public broadcaster buys satellite capacity to keep national channels on air; continuity is the service, not an incidental benefit. The committee linked board-level negligence to an interruption on 6 June 2022, when all Nepal Television channels reportedly stopped broadcasting for about 30 minutes. It also said external board appointees were not given accurate information by senior management and that ministry and broadcaster technical staff did not discharge their responsibilities effectively.
The immediate payer was Nepal Television, now part of Public Service Broadcasting Nepal. The wider burden falls on its public-service budget: money spent on avoidable capacity, premature payments or unsupported bills is unavailable for programming, equipment renewal and distribution resilience. The committee further reported incomplete compliance with tax and other revenue obligations that should have been paid into government accounts, extending the exposure beyond the broadcaster's own ledger.
Submission begins the accountability test
The committee reportedly reviewed decisions from the original 2012 agreement through later supplemental contracts and concluded that senior management and board officials made decisions contrary to the institution's interests. It recommended that the government begin the legally required action against responsible people. That recommendation does not establish personal culpability, and the available reporting does not say which authority will investigate next, whether the report has been formally referred or when any response is due.
The next evidence should therefore be procedural. The ministry can publish the report, identify the contracts and counterparties, disclose how the NPR206.17 million was calculated, seek responses from those named and specify whether matters are going to procurement, audit, disciplinary or criminal authorities. Nepal Television can also show what has changed in competitive tendering, capacity forecasting, invoice verification and satellite-life risk.
Until then, the loss estimate remains a serious but unadjudicated finding. The central question is no longer whether satellite capacity was necessary. It is whether a public institution can prove that each megahertz, payment and extension was subjected to enough competition and technical scrutiny to keep a national broadcast service both economical and on air.