Nepal’s international aid partners have pledged up to $128-million in aid to boost the economy and help the fight against Maoist rebels, officials said on Monday.
The offer of funds came after a two-day donor conference in London last week on ways to help the Himalayan kingdom combat an increasingly violent Maoist insurgency.
Representatives of UN agencies, the World Bank and 14 countries discussed the financial woes faced by Nepal, whose tourism-dependent economy has been battered since the rebels stepped up their armed campaign to topple the monarchy last year.
”The two-day Nepal economic assistance meeting held in London under the aegis of the UK between June 19 and 20 made a positive response from the aid donors to help Nepal mend its economy and fight terrorism provided the public exchequer fulfills the conditions laid by the donor countries,” the leader of the Nepalese official delegation Shankhar Nath Sharma said on his return from London.
”The international aid donors representing 21 countries including Germany, France, Japan, Great Britain, US, China and those from the Scandinavian and Nordic nations have pledged of their continued economic cooperation to Nepal,” he said.
”But the Nepalese government needs to take stringent
anti-corruption measures, check misuse of funds and make good governance.”
”Nepal’s aid donors have also assured of helping the supply of military equipment ranging from helicopters to the modern arms and ammunition to fight terrorism,” he said.
After last week’s meeting Britain’s Minister for International Development, Clare Short, said Nepal needed financial aid, but added there was also an urgent need to ”address the underlying issues of
corruption, discrimination and weak governance that have allowed the crisis to develop”.
The Maoists broke a four-month ceasefire in November and launched an intense wave of attacks devastating the tourism industry, which employs some 250 000 people and is the impoverished country’s chief source of foreign currency.
Arrival of foreign tourists plunged some 46% in the first quarter of 2002 compared with the same period last year, according to hotel and tour operators’ figures.
Nepal’s government says it has also incurred $250-million in damage and revenue loss from attacks to civilian infrastructure, a frequent Maoist tactic.
More than 4 300 people have died since the Maoists launched their ”people’s war” in 1996 to topple the constitutional monarchy, according to the official count.
About two-thirds of the deaths have come since the end of the truce. – Sapa-AFP