Foreign aid to Nepal rises to 30pc in FY 2016-17


FE Team | Published: January 01, 2018 14:43:12 | Updated: January 02, 2018 14:57:08


Foreign aid to Nepal rises to 30pc

Foreign aid to Nepal have seen rose to 30 per cent fiscal year 2016-17.

Himalayan country saw 30 per cent rise in disbursement of Official Development Assistance (ODA) received from multilateral and bilateral donors in the last fiscal year, a finance ministry report said.

A total of 1.39 billion US dollars was disbursed in the last fiscal year that concluded in mid-July. In the previous fiscal 2015-16, disbursement of foreign aid was 1.07 billion US dollars, reports Xinhua.

Foreign aid disbursement rose significantly in the last fiscal year compared to previous six years when foreign aid disbursement remained between 960 million US dollars and 1.1 billion US dollars, the report said.

According to the report, "There has been noticeable rise in foreign aid disbursement since fiscal 2014-15 which is due in part to the inflow of aid following the disastrous earthquake in 2015."

Nepali Finance Minister Gyanendra Bahadur Karki said that foreign assistance has been an important part of Nepal's development efforts.

He said that they want foreign aid to be mobilised in line with Nepal's constitutions and laws.

The Nepali government has long been urging donors to channelise their aid through government agencies so that how the aid has been spent and whether the aid has been effective, could be tracked.

But, the report said that as much as 73 per cent of aid was disbursed through government agencies, the rest was channelized through non-government actors such as non-government organisations and community-based organisations.

Among the multilateral donors, the World Bank topped the list with contribution of 346 million US dollars in the last fiscal.

Other multilateral donors in top five positions include: the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Country Team, the European Union and the International Fund for Agriculture Development.

Among the top five bilateral donors, the United States aid agency, USAID topped the chart with 134 million US dollars.

The United Kingdom, Japan, India and China are other countries in the list of top five donors in the last fiscal year, according to the report.

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