KATHMANDU: Nepali Congress (NC) President and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has said that unnecessary politics is being done by creating confusion in the name of United States grant assistance Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

“MCC is a grant given for the development of the country when we are borrowing heavily from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank by agreeing to pay certain interest for the same purpose. There has been extensive politics on the MCC grant agreement; which is totally unnecessary,” said Deuba.

Addressing the NC parliamentary party (PP) meeting at the Federal Parliament building in New Baneshwor Tuesday, Prime Minister Deuba said, “We need to bring in grants for the development of the country and reduce debt. We ought to ratify MCC agreement as it is not loan.”

During the meeting, NC lawmakers drew the PM’s attention to the issues raised about MCC and the potential damage that could inflict to the party in the next general election if the government moves ahead with the grant agreement. In response, Deuba told them that the MCC agreement would help to build power transmission lines and upgrade roads in the country.

“MCC has not come out of nowhere for the development of Nepal. It is a grant received by the government after fulfilling required legal criteria and through competition. It is part of relation with a democratic country. The past governments subsequently fulfilled and reformed the legal mechanisms required to obtain the MCC grant, which brought us to the present situation,” NC Whip Pushpa Bhusal said, quoting PM Deuba, adding, “Therefore, unnecessary politics on MCC is useless.”

The prime minister expressed commitment to discuss the MCC Compact with all other parliamentary parties to move it ahead. He also asked lawmakers not to make haphazard comments on the MCC agreement unless they understood it well. “MCC is in the best interest of a democratic country, however, unnecessary confusion has been created by making unnecessary comments by the people who have not understood it well.”

He urged the lawmakers to go through the MCC agreement well before making any comments on it.