NRA to coordinate with govt, donors for reconstruction budget

Kathmandu, Sept. 21

Chief Executive Officer of the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) Sushil Gyawali on Friday said that the reconstruction body would take initiatives at the national and international level to manage resources to meet the financial requirement to complete the post-quake reconstruction.

“The NRA will bridge the financial gap by coordinating with the Nepal government and the donor community,” he said while addressing the 8^th meeting of the Development Assistance Coordination and Facilitation Committee (DACFC), the body to coordinate between the government and the donors to oversee the international contribution in the reconstruction.

Representatives of about 25 donor agencies and international development partners had attended the meeting.

Gyawali informed the meeting that about Rs. 600 billion more was required to complete the remaining reconstruction work.

The cost of the five-year reconstruction work had earlier been estimated at Rs. 938 billion. The total budgetary expenditure and the projected expenditure this fiscal year would come to around Rs. 336 billion.

However, the actual monetary requirement would be confirmed after the review in the five-year reconstruction plan.

Gyawali also said that the NRA would try to acquire the amount pledged by the donor community during the International Conference on Nepal’s Reconstruction (ICNR) held in the immediate aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake.

Highlighting the progress on the overall reconstruction till date, he also informed the development partners that the NRA was set to review the Post-Disaster Recovery Framework, prepared after the detailed damage assessment survey in 2016, as the post-earthquake reconstruction reaches a mid-way.

The NRA, with the support from the donors, had published the PDRF 2016-2020 to implement the post-quake reconstruction work in a systematic and structured manner.

 The representatives of the donor community praised the NRA’s work on private housing reconstruction in the villages and stress the need for focusing more on the marginalised groups who have not been able to rebuild their houses. 

 They raised issues concerning retrofitting of damaged houses, monitoring and evaluation of constructed houses, availability of engineers at the community level, reconstruction of houses for vulnerable groups, third-party monitoring and the capability of the local governments to implement the recent government decision to hand them over the responsibility.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 22 September 2018.