38% physical progress is made by the expressway
One of the Nepali Army’s national pride initiatives, the Kathmandu-Tarai/Madhes Fast Track project, is probably not going to be finished by the mid-April 2027 deadline. Major General Kamal Bikram Shah, the project chief, stated that the monsoon chaos in the final week of September 2024, along with a number of technical difficulties and project obstacles, are likely to cause the project’s deadline to be further delayed. Overall, there has been 38.26% physical progress and 39.84% financial progress. The project has been growing at a rate of 10% per year. The project is 70.977 kilometers long overall.
Further impeding progress is the unfinished tree-cutting work at the project site. Even though the government, led by Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, gave the project to the Nepali Army on May 4, 2017, real construction on the Fast Track didn’t start until May 14, 2021, following the completion of the DPR designed by the Korean company. The project consists of seven tunnels totaling 10.09 km in the Makwanpur district alone. However, only two tunnels have seen advancements to date. From Chobhar to Bara, the Nepali Army is carrying out the project by breaking it up into ten distinct packages.
