Nepal prefers Indian vaccines over Chinese as FM Gyawali visits India

NEW DELHI: Procurement of half a million doses of Covid-19 vaccine from India tops the agenda of Nepalese foreign minister Pradeep Gyawali who arrives in New Delhi on January 14.

While Gyawali has written to his counterparts in both India and China for procurement of vaccines, Kathmandu has given priority to the vaccine produced in India because of reasons like logistics, pricing and Delhi’s assurance to facilitate procurement, ET has learnt.

Talks with India have reached an advanced stage and the KP Sharma Oli-led government prefers purchasing from India, sources told ET from the Nepalese capital.


“We think that we will get vaccines for about half a million people from India as a goodwill gesture,” a senior source from the Nepalese government said, signalling warming of ties between Delhi and Kathmandu.

Nepal is looking to procure vaccines to inoculate 12 million in the first phase and India is the preferred source, according to the country’s minister for health and population, Hridayesh Tripathi.

“But we are also aware that the vaccine has become a political commodity today,” Tripathi recently told Nepal’s leading daily Kathmandu Post.

Earlier, the Oli government had sent separate diplomatic notes to the countries that are producing Covid-19 vaccines.

Nepal’s envoy to India, Nilamber Acharya, has held two rounds of talks with senior officials of the Pune-based Serum Institute of India and met senior officials of Bharat Biotech in order to speed up the vaccine procurement process.

“Both Indian firms have already assured us to provide the Covid-19 vaccine, shared the price list, and clinical and technical details,” said one of the sources quoted earlier.

He said, “It is now up to Kathmandu to take a decision as India will be rolling out the Covid-19 vaccine from January 16.

“Although efforts are on to procure vaccines from China, more priority is given to India due to medical and clinical reasons,” another source said.

Gyawali is scheduled to hold a meeting of the bilateral joint commission with his counterpart during his visit. He will be the first senior-most political leader from Nepal to visit India since the outbreak of Covid-19.

Addressing the Parliament on Sunday, Oli sent out a positive message on India-Nepal ties after the tension that had grown last year over a boundary row.

“I in a real sense want friendship with India and take it forward for a stronger bond in coming days. I want that friendship to flourish, take it to a new height, which never would be on basis of inequalities," Oli said. “It would rather be based on sovereignty and equality, on the basis of which the relation between the two countries would develop and expand further. That friendship also would spring from deep within the heart.”