The 60-megawatt (MW) Khimti hydel project represents a fundamental turning point in the history of hydropower development in Nepal. Whereas almost all of Nepal's previous projects were government and/or grant funded, Khimti was the first to be developed by private investors and the first to involve extensive collaboration between a Nepali company—the Butwal Power Company (BPC)—and international commercial developers. In keeping with the then ascendant neoliberal development philosophy of “unleashing market forces,” and with post-Andolan Nepali governments eager to comply with the wishes of international donors (Gyawali 2003: 77), in the early 1990s Nepal put in place a series of laws that laid the legal foundation on which private-sector commercial power projects could be built. The Khimti project precipitated this new legal context but in so doing opened up Nepal to the gradually building, and now flourishing, market of independent power producers (IPPs) that are today the leading force in Nepal's power sector. Because of BPC's push to develop Khimti, Nepal had established the legal framework for private-sector power development more than a decade before India and other Asian nations. And because of BPC's and its daughter companies accumulated expertise and established human capacity in project development, the stage was set for Nepali manpower to continue to independently develop Nepal's hydropower potential.

But the moment that saw the birth of Nepal's private hydropower development sector was also, in some ways, the end of Odd Hoftun's development vision. At 60 MW, the Khimti project was the logical next step in Hoftun's plans to incrementally grow Nepal's human capacity in the hydropower sector. But a 60 MW project also, for the first time in Hoftun's career, finally surpassed the point at which government or donor grants could finance his undertakings. At this scale, project development would require international commercial financing which, in turn, would put in place a very different set of corporate dynamics.