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By Our Reporter
Some leaders of the ruling Nepal Communist Party have asked the government to clarify whether the grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was provided to Nepal as part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy of the US government.
While commenting on the political report tabled by party chairmen duo KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal at the party’s ongoing standing committee meeting, leader Dev Gurung and Bhim Rawal demanded that the government should clear the confusions about the grant and its implementing modality.
They argued that the MCC compact contradict the Constitution and is against non-alignment policy of Nepal.
It was stated that Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Yogesh Bhattarai first entered the issue in the meeting. Gurung and Rawal argued that the MCC grant might be a part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy. They said the parliament should not endorse the agreement.
The 500-million dollar grant pledged by the US government was supposed to get parliamentary nod from the previous parliamentary session. But it could not happen as former Speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara did not show interest in endorsing it. And He was trapped in sex scandal due to this, as claimed by Mahara himself.
A section of leaders in ruling NCP believe that at the fund is tied to the IPS, devised to contain China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Nepal plans to develop a 400-KV Nepal-India Butwal-Gorakhpur electricity transmission line and upgrade a few roads with the MCC grant.
However, Minister for Communication and Information Technology Gokul Prasad Baskota refuted the news that the NCP leaders opposed the MCC. While addressing the 55th anniversary of the The Rising Nepal on Tuesday, he said that Nepali mainstream media failed to unearth the real thrust of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) project of the U.S. government given to Nepal government.
He said the news on the MCC which was floated in the context of the Standing Committee meeting of the ruling NCP was not true.
“It was covered and presented just for selling their headlines,” he said. “Majority of the private papers and the State media too forget to cover the real thrust of the project and about the details of the project.”
The project MCC was a new chapter in the partnership between Nepal and the United States of America signed during the 70th anniversary of Nepal-US relation in 2017. A USD 500 million MCC compact agreement was first compact in South Asia.
The project will be mainly helpful to tackle two of the country’s most binding constraints to economic growth and that are low energy supply and high transportation costs. The project includes the construction of high voltage power lines equivalent to one-third the length of Nepal.
It will also facilitate increased electricity trade with India, a strategic partner, as well as activities that will strengthen sector governance – increasing transparency, efficiency and competition in Nepal’s power sector.
In the transportation sector, the compact includes investments that will strengthen the road maintenance regime, which is particularly important to the movement of goods and people in a landlocked, mountainous country like Nepal. The project was designed to spur private investment, increase regional connectivity, drive growth and fight poverty.