Businessmen urge PM Dahal to prioritise bringing PRIA into full operation

POKHARA, August 29: Businessmen have demanded the government give priority to bringing the Pokhara Regional International Airport into full operation during the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to China.

Despite coming into operation for the past eight months, businessmen have complained of not being able to conduct international flights to and from the airport. The airport officially started operations on January 1. 

Prime Minister Dahal is going on a visit to China on September 21. He is leaving for America on September 16 to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York and will fly directly to China from New York.

Anandraj Mulmi, the former president of the Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that PM Dahal was requested to give priority to the operation of Pokhara airport during his visit to China.

Even though Buddha Air asked for permission to fly from Pokhara to various cities in India, they were turned down. Mulmi said that international flights could not take place from Pokhara Airport because the government did not take diplomatic initiatives.

Pokhara Regional International Airport was built with the assistance of a 22 billion loan from the Chinese government.

Mulmi said that the government has to pay installments of nearly 1 billion rupees annually to pay off the debt incurred for the construction of the airport.

According to the loan agreement, the loan will be repaid in 26 installments.

Businessman Ganesh Bahadur Bhattarai said that the airport should also be operated to attract Chinese tourists and investors to Pokhara.

He said that the investments poured by businessmen in Pokhara are at risk as the government had announced that the airport would be operational and 2.5 million tourists would be brought to Nepal "The government celebrated the year of tourism in Nepal and said that we will bring 2.5 million tourists. We added investment, but due to covid there was no tourism year," he said, "Now the airport is operational, but due to the lack of international flights, there have not been high numbers of tourist arrivals as expected," he shared.