(TibetanReview.net, May30’24) — Public reports say Nepal has to pay a 2% interest on a $215.96 million Chinese loan for building what has now become a failed international airport project. However, a senior Nepalese journalist has said he had a copy of a signed official document showing the actual interest rate is 5%. For seeking clarification on this apparent anomaly in an online post on May 27, the Chinese ambassador to Nepal, Chen Song, has severely scolded senior Nepalese journalist Gajendra Budhathoki, demanding that he apologise.
“Worst lies that I ever saw. It is public information, yet you dare lie about it,” Song has retorted on an X post. And in another post, he has demanded an apology from Budhathoki, the chief editor of Taksar magazine, and also from “whoever the people you represent”.
In his online post, Budhathoki had said he had the signed document for the loan agreement which shows the interest rate offered by the Export-Import Bank of China (Exim Bank) was 5%, despite public reports of it being 2%, reported theprint.in May 29.
The Pokhara International Airport opened to much fanfare on Jan 1, 2023, in the second most populous city of Nepal. However, the airport has become emblematic of another of Beijing’s white-elephant development projects, saddling the local partner with high debt. There have been no international routes linked to the airport for more than a year after it opened, the report said.
Also, when the airport was inaugurated on Jan 1, 2023, the Chinese ambassador called it “the flagship project of the China-Nepal BRI cooperation”. However, the then Nepalese Foreign Minister, NP Saud denied this and assured in a Parliamentary address that no project under BRI had been implemented thus far, Navita Srikant, a geopolitical and security analyst and an India-Nepal relations observer, has noted.
“This is a loss of image for China — they have been promoting the BRI for so long but their first project in Nepal did not get that tag,” Srikant has added.
The perceived loss of image due to the difficulties faced by the project could be attributed to the Chinese ambassador’s public defensiveness regarding the Pokhara airport, Shivam Shekhawat, a junior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, has explained.
Due to the project’s failure to achieve its objective, the Nepalese government has been trying to get China to convert airport loan into a grant.
Nepal has to start repaying the loan, including the interest, from 2026.
Song is not new to giving hostile, undiplomatic outbursts. It was widely reported that at a public event in Sep 2023, Song asserted that India’s “policy” towards Nepal was not “friendly” while adding that New Delhi’s ties were also “not so beneficial” to the country.
Srikant has said: “This Twitter spat and use of undiplomatic language hints at a certain BRI-related anxiety of China in Nepal. However, there is a sense that Chinese ambassadors have habitually crossed diplomatic norms in Nepal. Even previously, the statement on India-Nepal trade crossed the line way too far.”
He has added: “The defensiveness, however, is not proportionate to the response made by the ambassador in a public verbal spat. No country would be okay with an ambassador attempting to intimidate their journalists.”