Belt and Road to nowhere

While negotiation with China on financing modality is possible, we are yet to see if it addresses our concerns.

On December 31, just a day before the inauguration of the Pokhara International Airport (PIA), the Chinese Embassy in Nepal claimed the PIA to be a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The PIA was surely constructed by a Chinese company with a loan from the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM Bank), but the project doesn’t fall under the nine BRI projects proposed by Nepal. China seems eager to portray BRI’s success story in Nepal, but the Nepal-China BRI agreement, signed in 2017, has remained in limbo ever since. A month back, China sent an expert team to initiate the feasibility study of the Kathmandu-Kerung railway—a project under the BRI. There have been a few other developments over the years, but neither has a project undergone the construction phase nor have any provisions been implemented.