Nepal to provide transit facility for China-India trade

The Nepalese government has commenced exercises on providing transit facility for China-India trade, a government official said Wednesday.

"Holding the first meeting on the matter, a high-level task force constituted under the coordinatorship of Shankar Sharma, vice-chairman of National Planning Commission, has formed two committees to carry out detailed studies," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

The two separate committees, one led by Commerce Secretary Bharat Bahadur Thapa and the other led by Binod Bahadur Shrestha, president of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, would conduct the study from public and private sectors respectively, he said.

The task force will lay down the future plan of action including the guidelines for tripartite talks between Nepal, India and China once it delineates the final strategy, the official said.

It will also work out an integrated concept paper by summing up inputs from all those individual strategy papers developed by experts and also incorporating public and private sector perspectives.

As the matter of providing transit facility for China-India trade has both economic and security implications attached to it, the task force has been asked to conduct a detailed study and come up with the national vision on the matter, he added.

Source: Xinhua