CONNECTING REMOTE AREAS OF NEPAL
639,764 persons from the project districts gained significantly better access to markets and social services.
Nepal suffers from high levels of poverty, especially in rural and mountainous areas. Pervasive poverty in these districts has been linked to poor road connectivity and corresponding high transport costs due to not being ac- cessible by motorized vehicles. Before project inception,
constructed 527 km of roads, rehabilitated 249 km of roads and completed 29,314 running meters of trail bridges. Ad- ditional components consisted of providing training and other initiatives to improve local populations’ employment and income generation opportunities, as well as their ca- pacity to plan, implement and maintain local infrastructure.
only 17 percent of the rural population had access to an all-weather road, compared to 60 percent in neighboring India. As a result, populations in rural and mountainous regions faced very restricted access to food supplies, health and education facilities, and other essential services.
As a result of the road and trail bridge con- nections built or rehabilitated by the project, 639,764 persons from the project districts gained significantly better access to markets and social services. The improved access and labor-based construction approach contribut- ed to increase in per capita income. Average
In this context, the government designed a program to improve connectivity and there-
fore promote rural economic and social development through a series of small-scale infrastructure and capac- ity building sub-projects across 18 very poor remote and mountainous districts of Nepal. In 2012 the OPEC Fund approved a US$20 million loan, which disbursed between 2013 and 2019, in support of this initiative. The project was co-financed with loan and grant resources from the Asian Development Bank and the Swiss Agency for Coopera- tion and Development. The OPEC Fund financing focused on the infrastructure component of the project, which
annual income per household in the road subprojects’ zone of influence had risen by 36 percent at the time of project evaluation. Transport costs for people had been reduced by 42.1 percent, and transport costs for goods had decreased by 80 percent by 2016. Freight volume had grown by an annual average 21 of percent since project inception, and increased competition between transport companies had contributed to improved transportation services: On aver- age, three transport organizations had been established in each district.
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