Nepal seeks India’s help to save its new airports built by China

Nepal is seeking India’s help to ensure the economic viability of its two new international airports built by China.

Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a.k.a Prachanda, arrived in New Delhi on Wednesday for a four-day visit. This is his first foreign visit after taking over as the prime minister of Nepal in December 2022. He will have a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.

The Modi-Dahal meeting is likely to see Kathmandu prodding New Delhi to allow additional routes for aircraft to fly through the airspace of India too and from the new international airports in Nepal – Pokhara International Airport and the Gautam Buddha International Airport in Bhairahawa, a source told DH on Wednesday.

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The issue has been on the agenda of discussion in the bilateral engagements between New Delhi and Kathmandu in the past too. India, however, has been treading cautiously on the request from Nepal, apparently due to security concerns.

New Delhi has been concerned over China’s persistent bid to spread its geopolitical influence over Nepal and build strategic assets in the country, not only elbowing out but also posing a security threat to India.

The $ 76 million Gautam Buddha International Airport at Bhairahawa in Nepal was funded by the Asian Development Bank and the OPEC Fund for International Development but was constructed by the Northwest Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group of China. It was inaugurated in May 2022.

The Export-Import Bank of China provided Nepal with a soft loan of $ 215 million to build the Pokhara International Airport, which was constructed by the communist country’s CAMC Engineering Company Limited and was inaugurated on January 1 this year.

The two were envisaged as Nepal’s second and third international airports after the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. But neither the airport in Bhairahawa nor the one in Pokhara could take off. No carrier is at present operating any international flight to and from the two airports, which may soon prove to be economically unviable.

One of the reasons for the reluctance of the carriers to operate international flights from the two airports is the lack of cross-border air routes between Nepal and India.

Kathmandu is pressing New Delhi hard to rework the 2009 bilateral air services agreement to provide for more cross-border entry and exit routes between Nepal and India – over Janakpur, Bhairahawa, Nepalgunj and Mahendranagar. It has also sought New Delhi’s nod to make the existing L626 route over Mahendranagar bidirectional. India at present allows the use of the route only for international flights exiting Nepal.

Another source aware of New Delhi’s discussion with Kathmandu on the issue told DH that India was not averse to allowing new cross-border air routes to and from Nepal, because it would not like the new airports in the neighbouring country to turn economically unviable and China to take advantage of such a scenario, as it had taken in case of the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka. However, according to the source, New Delhi would decide on the issue only after further discussion, both internally within the Government of India as well as bilaterally with Kathmandu.