Nepal's total outstanding external debts stood at 934.14 billion Nepali rupees (7.82 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of the 2020-21 fiscal year ending in mid-July, with multilateral donors accounting for a majority share of them, according to the Public Debt Management Office (PDMO).
The South Asian country owes 87.89 percent of its foreign debts to multilateral donors, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and the remaining to bilateral donors, the PDMO said in a recently released report.
The lion's share at 471.17 billion rupees (3.94 billion dollars) goes to the International Development Association, an international financial institution under the World Bank Group that offers concessional loans and grants to the poorest developing countries.
The Asian Development Bank comes second at 292.91 billion rupees (2.45 billion dollars), or 31.36 percent of Nepal's total foreign debts.
Among the bilateral donors, Japan is the largest creditor to Nepal with a share of 4.41 percent, followed by China and India, according to the report.
China's share in Nepal's foreign debts has been growing slowly and steadily in the past five years, from 1.93 percent in the 2016-17 fiscal year to 2.66 percent in 2017-18 and up further to 3.10 percent in 2018-19, 3.24 percent in 2019-20 and 3.39 percent in 2020-21, the report said.
"Even though a portion of the Chinese loans to Nepal has been growing in recent years, it is not a significant amount in the overall external debts of the country," Hira Neupane, information officer with the PDMO, told Xinhua.
"The debts owed to China are basically loans from the Export-Import Bank of China for various development projects," he added.
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