Infrastructure Quality

Nepal remains isolated from the world’s major land, air and sea transport routes although, within the country, aviation is in a better state, with 47 airports, ten of them with paved runways (CIA-The world factbook, 2008). Flights are frequent and support a sizeable traffic. Hilly and mountainous terrain in the northern two-thirds of the country has made the building of roads and other infrastructure difficult and expensive. There were 9.886 km of paved roads and one 59 km railway line in the south in 2007 (CIA-The world factbook, 2008). There is only one reliable road route from India to the Kathmandu Valley. The only practical seaport of entry for goods bound for Kathmandu is Kolkata in India. Internally, the poor state of development of the road system (22 of 75 administrative districts lack road links) makes volume distribution unrealistic. Not only its landlocked location and technological limitations but also the long-running civil war has prevented Nepal from fully developing its economy.