The post Nepal Submits US MCC Grant Agreement in Parliament Secretariat appeared first on Nepali Sansar.
]]>The grant agreement signed by Nepal and USA is a part of the Compact Program designed by Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) – an independent foreign aid agency of the US Government.
It was originally signed by then Nepal Finance Minister Gyanendra Bahadur Karki and MCC CEO Jonathan Nash in Washington DC on September 14, 2017.
The grant will be used to build energy and transport network in Nepal, helping the country draw more foreign and domestic investment.
The grant has to be approved by the Federal Parliament before being implemented.
As per the agreement, MCC will provide Nepal with USD 459.5 million as program funding and USD 40.5 million as compact CDF. The US grant will support two projects in Nepal:
Electricity and road infrastructure are the two main obstacles in the path of Nepal’s development.
Besides, the fund can also be used for financial management and procurement activities; administrative support expenses, such as rent and several other areas that go into implementing the agreement in accordance with MCC.
The MCC board of directors chose Nepal for the compact program because of the country’s efforts to establish rule of law and democratic institutions. Nepal’s strong performance on all MCC policy criteria was another factor why MCC chose the Himalayan nation for this special program.
The Nepal Government will also be investing USD 130 million for the specialized program.
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]]>The post World Bank Aid to Nepal: Another USD 133 Mn for Transport Infra appeared first on Nepali Sansar.
]]>This time the credit is focused on the development of country’s road & transport infrastructure.
“The World Bank today approved a USD 133 million credit to help Nepal construct and maintain safe, resilient and cost-effective bridges on its Strategic Roads Network,” read a statement from WB’s official release on September 26, 2018.
The fund will support Nepal on its ‘Strategic Roads Network of Nepal’ that envisages the development of Nepal’s transport infrastructure i.e., roughly 12,142 km of national highways, feeder roads and other roads of national importance connected by 1,773 bridges.
Under the ‘Second Bridges Improvement and Maintenance Program (BIMP-II)’ that is looking at connectivity and provincial development to spur economic growth, the new fund targets:
“Nepal needs a strong bridge network and even stronger institutions to manage and develop that network into the future. BIMP II aims at supporting both the network’s physical development as well as the government systems that manage it,” says Faris Hadad-Zervos, World Bank Country Manager for Nepal.
Faris hopes that the proposed developments would enhance the country’s crucial road network leading to increased and easy connectivity to the local populace, while saving time and costs associated with transport and trade.
BIIMP-II comes as a predecessor to BIIMP-1, the first-such global initiative that offers needed boost to the Program for Results (P4R) financing instrument to effective fund utilization for verifiable results.
“The operation also has a strong focus on climate resilience, gender inclusion and innovative technologies,” says Dominic Pasquale Patella, Senior Transport Specialist at the World Bank and Co-Task Team Leader of the Operation
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]]>The post Road Accidents on Rise in Nepal appeared first on Nepali Sansar.
]]>The report highlighted that a total of 2,000 people are losing their lives in road accidents in Nepal annually and the number hovers at 8,982 over the last five years period.
According to the report, road accidents are on the rise as a result of increasing vehicle usage.
Negligence of the driver, overtaking, passengers negligence, high speed, drunk and drive, technical glitches in vehicles and overloading of vehicles remain to be the major factors resulting in mishaps.
With regard to infrastructure challenges, narrow roads and lack of strong foundation are among the key reasons leading to substantial number of deaths, says Nepal Police Headquarters Spokesperson and Deputy Inspector General Manoj Neupane.
“Most of the accidents that happened involved motorcycles,” says Neupane.
As per the report, the number of deaths due to road accidents was 1,787 in FY 2013-14, which further increased to 2,004 in 2014-15, 2,006 in 2015-16 and a further to 2,384 in 2016-17.
The first four months of 2018 alone saw 801 accidents.
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