Instead of supporting Nepal in its probe into alleged jacking up of costs and compromise with the quality in the construction of the Pokhara International Airport by the China CAMC Engineering Co Ltd, the company hired by Kathmandu to build the controversial airport, Beijing has outrightly rejected allegation of any wrongdoings by the Chinese company in the execution of the $305 million airport project in the Himalayan country.

“Pokhara International Airport is an important infrastructure project in China-Nepal cooperation and hailed in Nepal as a project of national honor. According to my knowledge, Chinese companies took into full consideration the local situation, followed the quality standards strictly during the design and construction, and kept complete records,” China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said.

She further added that “the project is playing an active role in improving Nepal’s domestic and international air connectivity.”

Nepal’s anti-corruption agency, the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has launched a probe into allegation after The New York Times in its report in October maintained that the China CAMC Engineering Co Ltd “inflated the cost of the project and undermined Nepal’s efforts to maintain quality, putting a priority on its own business interests.”

In 2014, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) signed a contract with the China CAMC Engineering Co Ltd for the construction of the Pokhara International Airport. After crisscrossing through hurdles, the construction of the airport began in 2017—much before Nepal agreed to become a part of China-led Belt and Road Initiative.

Termed as Nepal’s Hambantota, the Pokhara International Airport has always been in the thick of controversy right from its inauguration on January 1, 2023, by Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda.

China unilaterally declared it as a part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Then it has failed to attract any regular international flights. Till now the airport could see the landing of just one international plane when A319 aircraft of China’s Sichuan Airlines with 70 passengers and cargo landed at the airport in the third week of June 2023.

Experts say the Pokhara International Airport has a built-up problem due to its location around rugged mountains of Nepal. It can facilitate landing of only narrow-body jets with low payload capacity. On January 15, 2023, a Yeti Airlines twin-engine ATR 72 plane with 72 people onboard it crashed while attempting to land at the airport.

The incident has since then deterred international flights from landing and taking off from the international airport in Pokhara, a scenic place which lies 201 km away from Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city.

While quoting the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), The Annapurna Express, the Himalayan nation’s English daily newspaper, said the Pokhara International Airport should conduct at least 100 daily domestic flights and 50 weekly international flights in order to sustain the operation of the airport. The CAAN said the Pokhara International Airport has to generate sufficient revenue so that it would be possible for it to pay $3.2 million annually in interest to the Exim Bank of China.

Much before the expose of The New York Times on the Pokhara International Airport, the Centre for Social Inclusion and Federalism (CESIF), a non-profit independent private research institute in Nepal had questioned the commercial viability of the airport. In its study the CESIF observed that the airport is an example of the state driving a development project for the sake of political imagination, while “muting concerns about commercial viability and corruption.”  The CESIF in its study further said the airport could have been built at a cost of $100 million.

“There are so many inconsistencies and irregularities to suggest Pokhara airport will become a burden to the country,” Jagdish Chandra Pokharel, former Vice Chairman of Nepal’s National Planning Commission was quoted by The Annapurna Express as saying. In order to minimize the loss due to the Pokhara airport, Nepal has made several requests to China, even during the September 23-30 visit of Prime Minister Prachanda, to convert loans provided for the construction of the airport into grants or aids, but Beijing has turned a deaf ear to the Himalayan country’s request.

However, hue and cry over the Pokhara International Airport is being made at the time when concerns about China’s debt-trap diplomacy are piling up across the world. Its BRI projects have faced backlash due to expensive, low-quality construction, and growing debt burdens for borrowing countries.

As a result, countries like Italy and the Philippines, which were prominent partners of BRI, have quit the initiative, while the recently concluded Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation meet in Beijing saw the presence of only 23 heads of state or government in comparison to 37 at the earlier meet of the BRF in 2017.

Report on PRIA:

Technical Glitches at Pokhara Airport, Built with Chinese Loan Assistance, Lead to Flight Disruptions

Is Pokhara International Airport becoming a Chinese ‘debt trap’ ?

Pokhara air crash: Lack of navigation system at the Pokhara airport could be a “contributory cause”

Chinese Ambassador Once Again Says Pokhara Airport as a Flagship BRI Project