In a major blow to Nepal’s development efforts, as many as 34 USAID projects worth Rs46.12 billion ($329,429,516) have been permanently terminated, according to multiple media reports coming from the United States.

Out of this amount, $174,255,867 has been confirmed as the original bill of lading to the USAID headquarters.

Not only have projects and programmes under USAID been affected but the reimbursement and procurement process for another $500 million under the Millennium Challenge Corporation Nepal Compact has also been hit.

The MCC is contributing $500 million, while the government of Nepal is providing $197 million to implement two projects in Nepal with a timeline of three-and-a-half years.

There has been no independent verification of these numbers. This is because most of the senior USAID staff are either on leave or have been asked to leave Nepal following the Trump administration’s global review of USAID support. But two US-based news outlets, Punchbowl and Highergov, have published detailed lists of projects terminated by the new US administration over the last six weeks.

Punchbowl has released a 386-page list of projects terminated by the State Department, which was tasked with reviewing USAID funding worldwide. Both news outlets claimed that they received the list from various members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee through a whistleblower.

On January 26, Nepal’s finance ministry stated that four USAID-funded projects and programmes had been halted.

The four projects that had received financial aid from the agency but which are supposedly being stalled for next three months are: USAID Health Direct Financing Project, USAID Agricultural Direct Financing Project, USAID Education Direct Financing Project, and USAID Inclusive Policy Direct Financing Project.

Also, as many as 300 NGOs, consultancies, and nonprofits that had been receiving aid and financial assistance directly from the agency were also affected. But with the State Department’s decision to terminate 83 percent USAID-funded projects and programmes, very few projects in Nepal are expected to continue.

Of the $320.94 million in USAID aid that faced the termination, half had already been approved for expenditure, known as original bill of lading (OBL).

On Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the United States is canceling 83 percent of USAID programmes, thanking Elon Musk’s DOGE team for its work.

“The 5,200 contracts that are now canceled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,” Rubio said in a post on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk. The X owner also leads the all-powerful Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new government arm created by Donald Trump after his inauguration on January 20.

“Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform,” said Rubio. The remaining 17 percent aid programmes will be overseen by the State Department, he added.

But a federal judge, Amir H Ali, in his ruling stated that President Trump had overstepped his authority in shutting down most foreign assistance, saying the administration could no longer simply sit on the billions of dollars that Congress had provided for foreign aid, according to the Associated Press.

In May 2022, the government of Nepal and the USAID had signed a development objective agreement (DOGA).The US government and USAID had a five-year strategic plan for Nepal with a commitment of $659 million. This includes both on-budget and off-budget funding. Now most of these projects have been eliminated.

Out of the programmes and projects selected and designed under the $659 million commitment, some have been completed, some are halfway through implementation, and some were about to launch, said two Nepali government officials.

On January 20, Trump issued an executive order directing a freeze on foreign assistance funding and a review of all US aid and development works abroad. With Rubio’s announcement, some 5,200 of USAID’s 6,200 programmes were eliminated—of which 34 were active in Nepal.

Rubio said about 1,000 remaining contracts would now be administered by the State Department.

The long list of terminated projects and programmes

According to Punchbowl, the USAID projects/programmes terminated in Nepal include those related to: Enhancing the understanding of earthquake hazard risk in Nepal; Support government’s disaster risk reduction efforts; Air pollution control; Boosting the competitiveness of Nepali enterprise; HIV prevention and other sexually transmitted diseases; Prevention of gender based violence; USAID inclusive livelihood; USAID inclusive livelihood central; and USAID agriculture inputs.

Similarly, projects and programmes related to education and research that were terminated include: Expanding access to education for Nepali children and bringing students back to schools; USAID Nepal engineering service; Building green, building organisational and technical capacity of local Nepali organisations to produce high quality research and analysis of sub-national level socio-political issues.

Other terminated projects include: Supporting the country’s development cooperation strategy (strengthening democratic system) to support the USAID country development cooperation strategy whose goal is more self reliant, prosperous, inclusive Nepal that delivers improved democratic governance, health, education); implementation of various USAID contracts in Nepal; procuring colour printer, capacity development of the local implementing partners; agriculture transformation activity; support to the health office including health learning; improving the nutrition status of Nepali women, adolescence and children, according to Punchbowl.

Likewise, the USAID education emergency response (mostly in quake-affected districts of western Nepal); USAID community justice (strengthening local judicial activity including justice access and delivery to the woman, youth and marginalized group); USAID feed for future (supporting the poultry market system) and to support Shreenagar Agritech Industries Pvt Ltd); feed the future (tea production, partnership and production ); feed the future Nepal USAID agriculture supports for climate smart farming, also faced elimination.

Punchbowl stated that controlling HIV prevalence in Nepal (Supporting the ART service to the HIV infected people and meeting Nepal’s target to ending the HIV epidemic as public health threat by 2030); HIV prevention service including testing, preventing new infections, detection and treat HIV cases and provide care to the new infected people; USAID Hamro Samman (preventing trafficking in persons); retaining the gardner at the Temple House during the transition of USAID mission directors; procuring satellite phones; curved monitor (to procure 80 units for USAID); procuring network cable for restructuring of cubicles; procuring the 4G adopter, are also in the list of termination.

Moreover, procurement of various electronic gadgets and items and services for USAID including of 14 media converters; procurement of three units of rolling stands for Google meet; tableau desktop software; procurement of 20 iPhones, 4 units of UPS; 25 units Samsung curved monitors; IT accessories like keyboard, mouse, laptop locks and adaptors; procurement of UPS for Demarc room; procurement of networking cables, have also faced termination.

Projects and programmes like GID learning for USAID implementing partners; consultancy for USAID’S local staff empowerment; USAID Nepal health survey (to assist Nepal health facility survey and Nepal demographic and health survey); USAID local works programme (co-create a locally led development programme); sustainable disaster management and humanitarian action for building resilient Nepal; building disaster resilience community in Nepal; support to 354, 938 quake beneficiaries; capacity building for Nepal’s disaster response; reducing air pollution in Kathmandu Valley (Kathmandu clean air programme) also face termination.