Kathmandu (Nepal):Nepal's Parliament on Sunday endorsed the contentious US-funded USD 500 million grant agreement amid protests by main opposition party CPN-UML. Finance Minister Janardhan Sharma put the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact for voting after deliberations on the agreement in the House of Representatives.
Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota declared endorsement of the MCC through voice voting despite protests by main opposition party CPN-UML in the lower house. The US government had set February 28 as the deadline to endorse the grant project. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who is also chief of ruling Nepali Congress, earlier held hectic political consultations with other parties regarding the endorsement of the project from the Parliament.
Nepal and the US in 2017 signed the MCC agreement, meant for building Nepal's infrastructure such as electric transmission lines and improvement of national highways. The MCC is a bilateral United States foreign aid agency established by the US Congress in 2004. It is an independent agency separate from the State Department and USAID.