Decision Dossier — Hydropower Securities Disclosure
An evidence-led comparison of bounded civic data, minimum machine-readable annexes and fuller structured filing for hydropower securities; the current evidence covers four issuers, not the sector.
- Page status
- Working page
- Updated
- 2026-07-19
- Last reviewed
- 2026-11-04
- Review due
- 2027-02-04
Decision Question
What disclosure format and minimum data fields would let investors and regulators compare hydropower offering plans with post-offer outcomes without imposing an unusable reporting system on issuers or SEBON?
Established Facts
- SEBON Hydropower Offering Records (Selected Issuers, 2018–2025) documents approved rights-offer prospectuses for a bounded four-issuer cohort: Ankhu Khola, Joshi Hydropower, People's Power and Terhathum Power.
- Each prospectus assigns at least some proceeds to financing liabilities, but the mixes differ: project investment, bank repayment, promoter-advance repayment, and repair and maintenance appear in different combinations.
- Ankhu Khola's audited FY 2081/82 statements establish completion of its rights issue and substantial debt reduction, but do not reconcile the full planned investment in Ankhu Khola-2.
- People's Power and Terhathum have issuer-published post-offer evidence consistent with capital increases and debt reduction, but the current records are unaudited. Joshi's final allotment and post-offer application of proceeds remain unverified in the source record.
- A SEBON pipeline record or approved prospectus establishes a filing stage or planned use of proceeds; it does not by itself establish completion, allotment or actual use.
Unknowns
- A declared sampling frame and complete census of hydropower IPOs and rights issues.
- Final allotment and post-offer outcomes for Joshi Hydropower.
- Audited FY 2082/83 confirmation for People's Power and Terhathum.
- Full reconciliation of Ankhu Khola's planned project investment.
- SEBON's current structured-data policy, technical capability, cost constraints and any prior pilot.
- Which fields investors, supervisors and issuers consider decision-useful, and which require confidentiality or legal interpretation.
- Aggregate banking exposure and whether public securities data can be reconciled with NRB supervisory records.
Comparable Cases
No sourced comparable securities-regulation case is included in the current corpus. The legacy page's references to foreign XBRL programmes were not supported by source pages and are not used here.
Transfer limitation: a structured-filing system from another jurisdiction may rely on different accounting taxonomies, digital signatures, enforcement powers, issuer capacity and market infrastructure. Its existence would not establish the right format or implementation sequence for Nepal.
Response Options and Trade-offs
| Option | What it would involve | Potential advantage | Material limitation or risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Continue a bounded civic dataset | Publish issuer-level fields with source links, audit status, cutoffs and missing values | Can proceed with existing records and exposes evidence gaps | Remains incomplete, labour-intensive and non-authoritative |
| Require a minimum data annex | Add a downloadable CSV or JSON schedule for offering terms, planned proceeds, allotment and actual use | Lower implementation burden than a full filing platform; supports comparison | Requires stable field definitions, validation and enforcement |
| Phase a fuller structured-filing system | Develop a taxonomy, pilot with selected issuers, then expand | Could support more comprehensive automated analysis | Higher technical, training and compliance cost; poor taxonomy design can create false comparability |
| Standardise post-offer reconciliation only | Require a dated table comparing planned and actual use of proceeds, with audit status | Directly addresses the main evidence gap in the current cohort | Does not solve broader financial-statement or market-data accessibility |
| Retain PDF-only filing | Keep current public-document practice | Lowest transition cost | Preserves extraction burden and makes cross-issuer comparison difficult |
TransparentGov Assessment
Preferred evidence-led sequence: complete the bounded four-issuer reconciliation, publish its sampling limits, and test a minimum machine-readable annex covering planned proceeds, allotment, actual use, debt balances and audit status. A fuller structured-filing mandate should follow a SEBON capacity and cost assessment.
This assessment would change if SEBON publishes an existing data standard or pilot, if issuers demonstrate that a minimum annex is impractical, or if a broader sample shows that different fields are more decision-useful.
Monitoring Triggers
- Joshi Hydropower final allotment and audited post-offer accounts.
- Audited FY 2082/83 statements for People's Power and Terhathum.
- Ankhu Khola-2 investment reconciliation.
- A SEBON consultation, filing specification or structured-data pilot.
- Publication of a declared broader sampling rule and issuer census.