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ADB Boss in Town
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has been giving us loans and grants for the past six decades. So, it is officially the diamond jubilee of our relationship with the ADB, and I guess to celebrate it, the ADB Boss, Masato Kanda, is in town.
And Kanda is a lucky man. He is the first foreigner to meet with our PM Balen. Now, our opposition wallahs will cry over why he met the ADB boss in person while giving a snub to Indian third-level government officers. After all, our opposition wallahs have chiya kharcha relationship with their handles at the Indian Embassy for decades.
Kanda tells us that Nepal is at a crucial turning point, and we have this great opportunity to build a resilient economy. I think we have heard this from our foreign donors and well-wishers for the past three decades, and hope we will finally turn the tide in the coming days.
Kanda has promised that ABD will ramp up its funding to a staggering US$ 2.4 billion by 2029, with a major focus on results and employment. Hope that means most of our development projects in hand will finally see some completion and our youth will get meaningful jobs at home!
During Kanda's visit, the ADB signed off on two major loan agreements amounting to US$ 165 million. There is the US$ 115 million drinking water project aimed at providing clean drinking water to almost a million folks. Three decades of so-called democratic rule in this land, and still our citizens wait for basic needs like clean drinking water!
Then there is the US$ 50 million policy loan to modernize and digitalize our cross-border goods transport system. ADB hopes that this will help to cut costs and increase efficiency for businesses. I guess our truck drivers will not have to get stranded for weeks at the border, and our byaparis don't have to deal with messy paperwork for days as well.
And like all visiting foreigners from donor agencies, Kanda had to go on a field trip to see what ADB money has bought and he virtually inaugurated two power substations built to strengthen Kathmandu’s erratic electricity supply and also visited some schools rebulit after the 2015 earthquake.
Kanda also met with our Finance Minister to talk about economic reform agendas and also met with our so-called top byaparis over chiya guff to talk about investment and job creation.
Under the ADB’s new Partnership Strategy (2025–2029), the annual lending is expected to be over US$600 million this year and will focus on green infrastructure, digital transformation, and innovative financial tools like local currency bonds.
If we look at the results from the past three decades, most of our mili-juli governments treated foreign loans like a lottery win and spent billions on feasibility studies that resulted in nothing but wasting some storage space in Singha Durbar!
We have mastered the art of capital underspending, where we somehow couldn't utilize the funds effectively and had to return unused development funds at the end of the fiscal year! Our netas and hakims somehow managed to convert the grants into petty cash for their own chiya kharcha, and many luxury vehicles bought in the name of development projects were given to our old school netas so they wouldn't have to endure the Kathmandu pollution while meeting their foreign handlers!
If our past governments were an Uber driver, then we would probably give them a one-star rating, and we should have asked for a refund decades ago! But we are the land of eternal optimism and hope that this government does try to actually build a prosperous Nepal!
Let us hope the government works on completely overhauling the system and utilizes the billions of ADB money well. We must end the "Asare Bikas" phenomenon, our national tradition of paving roads in June just in time for the monsoon rains to wash them away. And every single dollar of policy loans must be tied strictly to digital transparency.
And it's time we end the endless 'capacity-building workshops' at five-star hotels and instead put that money into local currency bonds to fund youth-led startups and green energy. It's time we stop acting like accidental tourists in our own development plan and make the right and tough decisions to finally make Nepal great again!
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