Kathmandu, October 27

The government is planning to provide irrigation facility to additional 44,500 hectare arable land in the next three years.

This is stated in the work plan related to the medium term expenditure structure released by the National Planning Commission recently. Irrigation facility is being expanded to promote agriculture and achieve the goal of economic prosperity.

It is stated in the work plan that projects regarding surface irrigation, ground water irrigation and inter-watershed transfer would be carried out with long term goal to provide sustainable irrigation facilities.

Along with this programme, the government has the objective of providing surface irrigation facilities to 25,745 hectare land, ground water irrigation facility to 122,100 hectare land.

At present, surface and ground water irrigation facilities are available to around 1.43 million  hectare land of the total 2.04 million hectare land connected with irrigation facility in the country.

The government has initiated intensive efforts to construct infrastructure required for irrigation.

It has been found that some 300,000 hectare arable land which can be connected to irrigation facility with ease is yet to be connected with irrigation facility.

The government has the objective to provide irrigation facility to the comparatively dry and upland areas in the hilly region by using new irrigation technology. Likewise, the government has also planned to develop extensive irrigation systems in the Tarai region.

It is stated that multi-purpose reservoir and inter-basin water translocation projects will be launched in the next three years to provide reliable irrigation facility to farmers.