The signing of the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) between the two countries, despite some resistance against it in Nepal — again mainly from within his own party — also reaffirmed the prime minister’s commitment to invite and protect Indian investment in Nepal. By “taking a gamble”, to use his own phrase, Bhattarai demonstrated that he is willing to take risk and invest his political capital to the cause of long-term political development of the country. Most of the opposition about BIPPA in Nepal seem to be based either on biases or misunderstandings about the agreement. There is nothing wrong that amounts to rastraghaat or treason in BIPPA that Nepal has signed with six other countries including Germany, France, the Netherlands, the UK, Finland and Mauritius. Actually, this bilateral agreement has terms more favorable to Nepal than many BIPPAs signed between two other countries.
Take for instance, the BIPPA signed between India and China. It contains a retrospective clause, meaning that BIPPA would be attracted to compensation cases of the past as well, but there is no such retrospective clause in our case. Similarly, the phrase “civil disturbance” that features in almost all the BIPPA agreements between two countries, has been replaced with “insurrection and riots”, which have much narrow interpretations.
One big disappointment of the visit was India’s lack of enthusiasm in providing US$ one billion line of credit that Nepal had requested to construct Kathmandu-Tarai fast track road. The Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) was also not signed at the last moment, sending signal that the goodwill at the political level does not easily translate at the bureaucratic level. When Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee visits Kathmandu, hopefully within a month, to sign DTAA, Indian announcement to implement some of the requests for economic assistance made by the Bhattarai government would do good to both the countries.
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