A NEW freight train service linking Chinese ports and the mountainous kingdom of Nepal kicked off last week.
The first cargo train carrying Covid-19 medical equipment and construction material from Xian arrived in Xigatse near the border, and signalled the activation of the 2016 Nepal-China Transit Transport Agreement (TTA).
Another cargo train with 390 tonnes of goods bound for Nepal also arrived in Xigatse from Lanzhou.
Under the TTA, Nepal is granted direct land access to China's sea ports on the eastern seaboard in Tianjin, Shenzhen, Lianyungang and Zhanjiang in addition to land ports in Lhasa, Lanzhou and Xigatse.
The Nepali Times said experts expect these new corridors to shorten arrival times for international cargo, which currently takes 35 days to get to Kathmandu via Indian ports.
"Transport along the new corridors promise to be time-efficient, and if costs prove to be competitive, our use of Chinese ports for international trade will increase in future," said Nepal's acting ambassador in Beijing Sushil Lamsal.
The trains take up to 10 days from the mainland to Xigatse, and the containers have to be transferred to trucks for the two-day drive across the Tibetan plateau to the Nepal border at Rasuwa or to the Kodari checkpoint.
However, roads on the Nepal side have still not been properly repaired after being damaged in the 2015 earthquake and the goods have to be transferred to smaller Nepali lorries.
Experts estimate that costs of shipments through China will be comparable to the maritime route via Indian sea ports.
However, Rajesh Kaji Shrestha of the Nepal Chamber of Commerce believes the cost effectiveness of the Chinese route compared with the sea-land route through India has to be evaluated properly before traders switch.
Nepali officials said the country now has the possibility of accessing transnational trade routes along Chinese ports, seeing that Xian is the closest city to the sea ports Nepal is allowed to access under the treaty.
Besides the infrastructure obstacles on the Nepali side of the Himalayan border with China, the Customs procedures are also said to be cumbersome with cartels and corruption hiking up costs.
"Cartels, middlemen and corruption push per-container costs much higher from Kerung to Kathmandu," says Prakash Singh Karki of the Nepal Freight Forwarders' Association.
"That is why for now we prefer the longer Kolkata-based route."
But if these problems can be solved, Karki is optimistic that the new land route via China will take off, especially after the railway line arrives at Kerung near the Nepal-China border.
On the Nepal side, there is an urgent need to upgrade the Kathmandu-Rasuwa highway to smooth all-year operations. Karki said that more than infrastructure, the challenge is to make Customs hassle-free and remove the stranglehold of the transport cartels.