GOMA AIRLINES TIRES BURST WHILE LANDING AT AIRPORT IN DOLPA Kathmandu, 2 Dec.: Two crew members of Goma Airways survived Sunday morning when tires of Goma Airlines burst while landing at Jufal Airport in Dolpa. Flights in and out of the airport were disrupted.. Nnnn MAN KILLS WIFE IN KAILALI Kathmandu, 2 Dec.: A man killed his wife following dispute at Sahajpur VDC-2 in Kailali overnight.. Tilak Saru Magar shot dead his wife Kopila Saru Magar. The husband survived with critical injuries when he turned the gun on himself. Nnnn BANKS ADSIVE CAUTION IN BUSINESS DEALING WITH CHINESE COMPANIES Kathmandu, 2 Dec.: :Commercial banks are adopting a cautious approach while doing business with Chinese construction companies after two banks risked losing around Rs 1.30 billion for giving counter guarantee to a Chinese bank that had given guarantee to the Chinese contractor involved in Melamchi Drinking Water Project, Prithvi Man Shrestha writes in The Kathmandu Post.. After the China Construction Bank refused to release the guarantee amount citing the court order, two Nepali counter guarantors—Himalayan Bank Limited (HBL) and Bank of Kathmandu (BoK)—are in a big trouble. A meeting of the Nepal Bankers’ Association (NBA) on Friday concluded that doing business with Chinese contractors is risky and asked all member banks to adopt caution while giving counter guarantee. A majority of banks also agreed not to do business with the China Construction Bank, according to a NBA source. “There will not be any transactions with the China Construction Bank henceforth,” said HBL CEO Ashok Rana, who is also the president of NBA. “We will have to be careful if a similar problem arises in other projects, in which Chinese contractors are involved.” China Railway 15 Bureau Group, with which the Melamchi project terminated the contract for bad performance, has filed the case in the Chinese court arguing it would not pay the guarantee amount as it had to give up the job due to bad work environment in the project site and Nepal. The two banks have given counter guarantee to the Chinese bank for performance security of $6.62 million and guarantee for advance payment of $6.62 million and 1.4 million euro (Rs 1.3 billion). As per existing mechanism, the Chinese bank should have released that amount to the Nepali banks, which would have been paid to the Melamchi Project. With the Chinese bank refusing to release the guarantee amount, the two Nepali banks are facing trouble after the Melamchi Water Supply Development Board asked them to release the guarantee amount. “We are holding discussion with all relevant parties, including the Melamchi Board and Nepal Rastra Bank, after the Chinese bank refused to release the guarantee amount, citing court’s order,” said Ajaya Sharestha, CEO of BoK. “We are also exploring legal options on what can be done in such cases.” He said the process of giving counter guarantee is similar internationally. “This is a rare case and has alarmed us,” he added. As work on many other projects in which Chinese contractors are involved has not been encouraging, Nepali banks are suspicious about the possibility of emergence of similar situation in future. That’s why they said they had to take such a decision. Melamchi Board of Krishna Acharya said they have asked the two Nepali banks to pay the guar- antee amount, but also acknowledged the banks’ problem. “That’s why we have also sent a letter to the Nepal Rastra Bank to help recover the amount,’ said Acharya. Nnnn NT TO AWARD CONTRACT TO CHINESE COMPANY Kathmandu, 2 Dec.: Nepal Telecom (NT) is preparing to award the entire 10 million mobile lines project to a single telecom equipment vendor against its original plan, Thee Kathmandu Post writes.. The company, which assigned package B of the project to Huawei, is also set to award package A to same firm. Officials at NT said despite reservations from some members, the NT board recently decided to assign the package to Huawei, which is already involved in 4.8 million lines (package B) of the 10 million lines project. “We will issue a letter of intent within a week to Huawei, informing other vendors that participated in the bidding,” said a senior official. According to the official, if other vendors do not object the decision, NT will sealing a deal within a month. Huawei has quoted $122 million for package A that, under which 5.2 million lines will be added in Central, Eastern, Far Western and Mid-Western development regions. NT had earlier planned to award the project to two vendors by breaking it into two packages to ensure effective implementation and avoid dependency on a single vendor. However, with other bidders ZTE Corporation and Ericsson refusing to carry out the project for cost reasons, NT was forced to approach Huawei. Both ZTE and Ericsson had rejected package A even if they were legally bound to accept it at the price quoted by Huawei, the lowest bidder. ZTE and Ericsson had quoted $155 million and $242 million for 5.2 million line’s package, respectively. As per tender condition, the second lowest bidder ZTE was supposed to accept the project, and later, Ericsson too refused to agree. “It seems Huawei quoted less to bag both the packages, but we have no option but to award it the package A,” said a member of the NT board, sharing his past experience that NT had to ‘suffer a lot’ while implementing 3.5 million lines through ZTE because of dependency on a single vender. “Our original plan was to avoid such a situation again.” In June, NT had signed a contract with Huawei for package B at Rs 6.74 billion ($85 million). The package enables the state-owned company to add 4.8 million mobile lines having capacity for 2G, 3G, and 4G in the Kathmandu valley and Western development region. Guna Kesari Pradhan, NT spokesperson, said Huawei, as per the agreement, would have to make a system ready to start distributing the lines within a year from the singing of the contract. “Installation of the core network under the first phase of package B has been completed and network testing underway,” she said. With NT losing its market share as a result of stiff competition from private sector operator Ncell, the 10 million lines project is aimed at aggressively its expanding services across the country. The current system capacity of NT allows it to distribute only 5.5 million lines, but more than 600,000 lines above the capacity have been distributed. nnnn