When the monsoon is weak, so is the budget

Druk Holding & Investments is less a company than the engine of the national budget. It holds the state’s commercial assets — hydropower (DGPC), telecom, mining, the national airline, Bank of Bhutan — and channels their profits to the treasury.

The profit line is cyclical because the portfolio is concentrated in hydropower, and hydropower depends on rain. The 2018 dip was a drought; the 2020 dip was the pandemic; the 2024 jump to Nu 13.8 billion followed the consolidation of the 720 MW Mangdechhu plant onto the generator’s balance sheet — the largest single balance-sheet event in DHI’s history — and 2025 set a fresh record of about Nu 18.3 billion, with a Nu 6.5 billion dividend, at the June-2026 AGM.

What makes the number a national-budget question rather than a corporate one is the remittance. Dividends, taxes and royalties to government reached about Nu 22 billion in 2024 — roughly 40% of all national domestic revenue. When the monsoon is weak, so is the budget. That tight coupling between a hydrology-dependent portfolio and the public purse is the accounting tangle behind Paradox #67, the same money counted four ways.