Nepal and Finland signed a framework agreement on the Public Investment Mobilisation Project after a meeting between Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel and visiting Foreign Trade and Development Minister of Finland Ville Tavio at the finance ministry on Thursday.

According to the finance minister’s secretariat, the agreement was signed by Dhaniram Sharma, head of the international economic cooperation coordination division at the finance ministry, and Rinna Rikka Heikka, Finland’s ambassador to Nepal.

The project, under Finland’s Public Investment Facility Programme, aims to enhance Nepal’s socio-economic infrastructure and promote sustainable development, and it will facilitate concessional financing for key projects, enabling Nepal to invest in areas such as water supply, waste management, energy and electricity, digitalisation, meteorology, healthcare technology, disaster management, and rescue operations, a press note issued by the minister’s secretariat after the signing-in programme read.

It noted that the financial operations of the projects would be guided by the Public Sector Investment Facility Framework, which is based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) model. Given Nepal’s status as a Least Developed Country (LDC), it will receive 50 percent of the assistance as grant.

Speaking at the signing-in programme, Deputy Prime Minister Paudel hailed the agreement as a significant milestone for Nepal’s socioeconomic and infrastructure development. Similarly, Minister Tavio expressed confidence that the public investment mobilisation initiative would strengthen economic cooperation between Nepal and Finland.