Infrastructure corruption – Nepal’s airport

The Bangkok Post  addresses an area that is one of the more difficult areas to police easily, being infrastructure projects. In a 36-page report released last Thursday, “a parliamentary committee’s investigation into the airport in Pokhara found that China CAMC Engineering Co, the construction arm of the state-owned conglomerate Sinomach, failed to pay taxes, did not finish the project to specifications, and used poor-quality construction, all because of corruption and a lack of oversight.”

What is difficult about infrastructure projects is that even if procurement is transparent, the next steps, which include building and following schedules and ensuring contracting, are less transparent in most countries. Such corruption can impact communities very seriously, as what occurred in Serbia, as several people died due to corrupt building practices. Additionally, in this instance local politicians allowed Chinese state-owned contractors to ignore their obligations and charge for work it never completed, and at this time, we are still not certain if there might be safety concerns.

What can be done? Though the present situation is quite regrettable, in this instance there are clear lessons learned and there still are opportunities to make certain that other large infrastructure projects will have better monitoring and systems to avoid such results.

Link:

https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3006432/china-built-airport-in-nepal-littered-with-corruption