Floods and blocked roads stall Nepal's Dashain vehicle deliveries

Dashain-Tihar is usually the busiest selling period of the year for vehicle dealers in Nepal, but this year's season has been hit by continuous rain, landslides and the Bhote Koshi flood. Ratopati English reports that the market has slowed because new vehicles cannot be brought in while roads are blocked, and that dealers have run into some disruption during the peak season for four years running. Surendra Upreti, president of NADA Automobiles Association of Nepal, said landslides and floods have closed major national highways along with the northern customs points that connect with China. Thousands of vehicles meant for Dashain are stranded en route, he said, and some imported through the Rasuwa Gadhi border were washed away. Vehicles that have already cleared customs cannot reach markets such as Kathmandu because road links are broken, he added. Dhruva Thapa, a former NADA president, said imports through Tatopani and Rasuwa Gadhi have stopped since the flood washed away the road. Shipping vehicles from China by sea through Kolkata port in India is an option, he said, but it takes three to four months and pushes up transport costs, so it cannot help before Dashain. The report notes that most electric vehicles sold in Nepal are imported from China. Deepak Thapaliya, general manager of Laxmi Hyundai, said customers who booked vehicles for Dashain, many of them with bank finance already arranged, may not receive them on time, and warned that cancelled bookings would hurt company cash flow. Gaurav Sarda, director of Sarada Group, said preliminary information suggests about a hundred containers of Omoda and Jaecoo vehicles were washed away or badly damaged in the Bhote Koshi flood. Department of Customs figures cited by Ratopati English show 2,632 passenger cars entered Nepal in Bhadra, of which 81.5 percent were electric. The 2,145 electric cars, jeeps and vans imported that month were worth NPR 5.09 billion and generated NPR 3.23 billion in revenue, three times the 689 units recorded in Shrawan. Only 487 petrol, diesel and hybrid cars were imported in the same month.