Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what progress has been made on obtaining debt relief for Nepal following the recent earthquake in that country.

Nepal’s overall public debt stood at USD 5.36 billion or 25.6% of GDP (with external debt at 16.1%) in FY 2014-15 (Ministry of Finance, 2015), following a steady decline over nearly a decade. This is comparatively a low level of debt and is due to:

i) Government savings contributing to debt payback each year due to low budget execution and healthy growth in import-based revenues,

ii) Low request for borrowing, and

iii) Debt relief by the UK under Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) totalling GBP19.42 million between 2006/07 and 2012/13.

As a result of the low and reducing levels of debt in Nepal, there has been no request from the Government for debt relief for the post-disaster reconstruction.