What is Bhutan's proposed electricity tariff increase?
Bhutan Power Corporation's 2025–2028 tariff application proposes raising the Low Voltage rate — the band covering 99.96% of customers (households, small businesses, schools) — from Nu 2.66 to an unsubsidised Nu 5.73 per unit, a +115% increase. It is a proposal, not yet in force: the Prime Minister sent it back to the Electricity Regulatory Authority on affordability grounds, no final determination has issued, and the current Nu 2.66 rate still applies. The 23 High-Voltage industrial customers who consume 88% of the country's electricity face a smaller percentage increase.
The proposed jump lands almost entirely on the people who use the least electricity. Low-Voltage customers — 99.96% of all meters — consume only about 10% of domestic power, yet they would absorb the full +115% increase. The 23 industrial customers who take 88% of the electricity face a smaller percentage rise, from a base that is already among the cheapest industrial tariffs in the world.
Source BPC 2025–2028 tariff application, filed December 2025 (era.gov.bt); BPC Power Data Book 2025; The Bhutanese, 23 May 2026.
Even at the proposed Nu 5.73, a Bhutanese household would pay roughly three times what India pays for the same hydropower — and that figure is unsubsidised: the actual bill depends on a government subsidy decision that has not yet been made.
That asymmetry — the many paying more so the few pay less — is the inverted cross-subsidy examined in Paradox #56 and Paradox #64.