Nepal’s connectivity with the rest of the world has been deepening since the country’s opening up in 1990, the year that democracy, which had been suspended in 1960, was restored.
As Nepalis started traveling far and wide in search of better jobs and education, the burden on the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), the country’s only international airport, steadily increased. Thus started the quest for another international airport.
It was in this context that a 1971 plan for an international airport in Pokhara was dusted off in 2009. Four years later, in 2013, Nepal signed an agreement with China CAMC Engineering Ltd for the construction of a regional international airport in the tourist city.
The project became mired in controversy right from the start. CAMC’s winning bid came at $305 million, which was more than double the projected cost. After much criticism of the “flawed” contract, its value was revised down to $216 million.
Construction progressed in fits and starts before the airport was completed in late 2022, and Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli inaugurated it on January 1, 2023.
Now, it turns out, a major portion of even the revised expenditure was misappropriated.
In its 36-page report published last week, a parliamentary panel probing the project discovered irregularities worth over $100 million. The 12-member body pointed to some egregious instances of corruption.
For instance, the contract mandated the elevation of the ground for the runway to be between 2,677 and 2,674 feet above sea level. For this purpose, soil and pebbles had to be ferried to the site. The panel found $5.5 million had been paid for their transport, even though there is no documentary evidence that any soil was brought to the site. Perhaps this is why the eventual runway was only 2,636 feet above sea level, in clear breach of the contract with the CAMC.
Another finding was that various governments had illegally waived off $16 million in taxes to the CAMC. There are countless such instances of corruption packed in the probe report.
The House panel has recommended an immediate suspension of the head of the country’s civil aviation regulator as well as some of its ex-officials.
But the airport’s problems, built with the help of a soft loan from China EXIM Bank, go beyond these instances of corruption and design flaws.
Since its completion, there had been no scheduled passenger flights to or from Pokhara — until March 31. On that day, Nepal-Tibet joint venture Himalaya Airlines’ Airbus A319—with 32 Chinese and 75 Nepali nationals on board — flew there from Lhasa.
The plane was given a water cannon salute at the airport. But tourist entrepreneurs in Pokhara, who have invested billions of dollars in the hope of more business accruing from the new airport, want to see many more regular flights. (Currently, Himalayan Airlines flies the Pokhara-Lhasa route once a week.)
After much lobbying with the Chinese, Pokhara’s businessmen recently received a proposal from Sichuan Airlines that if they guaranteed three chartered flights from Pokhara, the airline would guarantee a total of 10 such flights. The hope is that these charter flights will lead to more regular flights.
That is unlikely as most international airlines will continue to shun Pokhara.
The airport, built amid difficult terrain, can accommodate only narrow-body planes, and even these will face payload issues. The permissible load for a narrow-body aircraft like Airbus A320 is 77 tons, but an A320 taking off from Pokhara can carry a maximum load of only 68 tons. This restriction prevents these flights from operating at full capacity. This is just one of the multiple terrain-related issues.
Then there are the geopolitical barriers. During the airport’s inauguration, Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Chen Song said the project had been built under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign policy tool. This was not the case as the agreement for the airport had been signed much before Nepal formally joined the BRI in 2017.
While building the airport, in addition to tourists from China, Nepal had been banking on bringing even more Indian tourists to make the project financially viable. But with direct Chinese financing in the Pokhara airport and with China placing it under the BRI — of which India is not a part — Indian airlines have stayed away.
Also, because of the Chinese involvement in new Nepali international airports like the ones in Pokhara and Bhairahawa, New Delhi has been reluctant to give “India-locked” Nepal additional air routes. Without these routes, it won’t be financially viable for international airlines to fly to Pokhara via longer routes.
After the publication of the latest parliamentary committee report, the airport’s international image has taken a further hit, and India could be even more averse to sending its planes there or to give Nepal additional air routes over its territories. Moreover, India is unlikely to do Nepal any big favor so long as the Oli government, with which it has had a difficult relationship, is in place.
Domestically, the corruption case could drag on for years, as they typically do in Nepal. For the Nepalis, the unfolding saga of corruption at the Pokhara airport is yet more evidence of the utter incompetence and corruption of their government machinery and bureaucracy.