As the nation fights hard to save the citizens from the Covid-19 pandemic, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has been busy travelling all over Nepal for the past several months. He has not been travelling to monitor Nepal’s Covid-19 response. Instead, he has been visiting various districts to inaugurate buildings, attend party meetings and lay foundation stones.

Since March 20201, Oli has laid the foundation stones for the projects that cost more than Rs 400 billion.

During his visit, he often talks about how a wave of development is coming in Nepal. But, almost all the projects that he officially launched have not actually started due to the lack of proper planning while those that have are being constructed at a snail’s pace.

Pandemic on the periphery
Even though much of the budget for the fiscal year 2020/21 was set for fighting the pandemic, the government’s interest was in starting projects for which funds had not been set aside and inaugurating the projects that were yet to be completed. This is raised a question if the government ever had interest in making sure that it was ready to fight the pandemic.

In the past three months, government officials have inaugurated roads, bridges, industrial estates and irrigation canals. Most of them have plaques with Oli’s name on them. While he personally went to lay the foundation stone in many projects, some of them were done by pressing a switch at the PM’s residence in Balwatar itself.

According to the government, most of these projects are going to be completed with the help of foreign direct investment (FDI) while it is yet to allocate a budget to the rest. Many projects are in limbo as the government is preparing for loans from other countries to complete it.

The length of these projects is between two to five years, according to the government, and will cost around Rs 400 billion. However, a budget of only Rs 2 billion was set aside for these projects in the ongoing fiscal year with an additional 11.75 billion coming from the FDI.