Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli will travel to China on Monday on a four-day visit during which the two sides were expected to discuss a new plan to revive the BRI projects, which failed to materialise even after seven years they were signed with much fanfare.
Oli will pay an official visit to China from December 2-5, during which Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet him. Premier Li Qiang and other officials will hold talks with him, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said here on Friday.
“Oli has visited China twice as Nepal’s Prime Minister and made important contributions to advancing the growth of China-Nepal relations,” Mao said, acknowledging his efforts to forge closer ties with Beijing, including signing a transit treaty to reduce dependence on India for his landlocked country.
“The two countries’ leaders will have in-depth exchanges of views on deepening our traditional friendship, expanding Belt and Road cooperation and exchanges and cooperation in various fields, as well as international and regional issues of mutual interest,” she said. Oli, regarded as a pro-China leader, heads a coalition government consisting of his Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and the Nepali Congress, which seeks balanced ties with China and India.
Oli will be breaking with the usual practice of Nepali prime ministers making India their first destination in the neighbourhood after assuming charge, amid media reports that he did not get an invitation from New Delhi.
Nepalese Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba from the Nepali Congress visited India after assuming office and held extensive talks with her Indian counterpart S Jaishankar.
The focus of Oli’s visit was to revive the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects signed between the two countries in 2017, according to media reports from Nepal. Kathmandu was an early signatory to BRI in South Asia.
But significantly not a single project under the BRI has been implemented so far, according to a report in Nepal daily, The Kathmandu Post.
The BRI is a mega connectivity project that connects China with Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Russia and Europe.
Both sides are now preparing to sign the second framework, an extended version of the cooperation document that explicitly focuses on seeking grants from China to fund the projects identified therein, the newspaper reported.
Projects likely to be signed during Oli’s visit included road projects forming part of the Koshi Corridor, which aims to connect Nepal with Shigatse in Tibet, the report said.
It is to be seen whether the two sides will decide on going ahead with the Railway project connecting the two countries through the Himalayan mountains which was estimated to cost over USD three billion considering Nepal’s decision to take loans from China.
China funded the feasibility study but wants Nepal to share the costs. Ahead of his visit, Oli said he will not seek Chinese loans amid concerns about a debt trap and added that Kathmandu will seek grants instead.
Foreign Minister Deuba visited China last week and held extensive talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in the Chinese city of Chengdu, sharing Nepal’s perspective on the revival of the BRI projects.
After she met with Wang, she returned to Kathmandu to brief Oli and will accompany him during his visit.
“We signed the BRI framework in 2017 and whatever assistance and support we receive from China now is in the periphery of the BRI. Things have not moved beyond that,” Deuba told the media on her return from Chengdu on Saturday.
“Mainly, we are focused on projects related to connectivity and cross-border infrastructure. The two parties agreed on a modality of future cooperation under the BRI framework,” the Post quoted her as saying. “In my meeting with Wang, I have made it clear that we are not in a position to take loans to fund the projects. They listened to our concerns carefully,” she said.
“Our debt is now 41 per cent of the GDP, which is alarming,” she said.
“The private sector can take loans but the government is not in a position to do so,” a Post report quoted her as saying.
