Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal is now visiting China after India. Dahal’s visit to China will start from September 22 and during this period he will also meet President Xi Jinping. It is said that 8 agreements will be signed between Nepal and China during this visit. According to the media, no agreement has been reached between Nepal and China on the most important BRI.
During this period, Nepal’s Pokhara International Airport, which has become a white elephant for Nepal, and the loan of six Chinese passenger planes, which are almost like junk, will definitely be discussed with the Chinese President. In the discussion, if Prime Minister Dahal can explain or take China’s President Xi Jinping into confidence, he will also have to appeal for the loan waiver.
Prime Minister Dahal, who is going to Beijing at the invitation of the Chinese Prime Minister, will hold talks with Chinese leaders on trade, energy cooperation, infrastructure, tourism, and border disputes, and all eyes will be on BRI and border disputes. Like India, Nepal wants to sign an agreement on international energy cooperation with China, but no agreement has been reached so far. According to the Kathmandu Post report, Dahal will ask the Chinese President to complete the BRI project with grants rather than loans.
In fact, under BRI, China is giving very expensive loans to countries around the world, due to which countries like Sri Lanka and Pakistan are stuck in the quagmire of billions of dollars of Chinese debt. It is for this reason that Nepal now wants to complete the BRI project through China’s subsidy. The Nepali Prime Minister should emphasize to the Chinese President that the loan given to the Pokhara Airport and the 6 planes made in China proved to be junk should be waived. However according to the news, despite Nepal’s wishes, China has refused to waive these two loans. Even after this, the Nepali side is going to raise this whole issue with the top leadership of China.
After the Pokhara International Airport was built by China, the airport became a white elephant for Nepal. Even though it has been a long time since Pokhara International Airport was completed, as expected, no business has come or flourished there. For this, Nepal took a loan from China’s Exim Bank. Not only this, Nepal had purchased 6 planes from China so that tourists can travel, but those planes have become of poor quality and have been lying idle for a few months. Even if Nepal cannot earn money from these planes, it will have to pay a huge debt to China. It is said that these two loans alone amount to 10 billion rupees.
At present, if we talk about the correct situation or correct assessment of the country, Nepal is badly stuck in the trap of treatyism. For a small country like Nepal, whose population is barely around 280 million, having seven federal provinces and maintaining the structure of the provinces has become a white elephant. Therefore, Prime Minister Dahal does not see any other option for the time being except to appeal to China to subsidize or waive the debt. – Yogendra Pratap Shahi
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