Nepal’s flood bill could hit $5 billion. Where will the money come from?

Over 1,300 have been killed, while 5,000 are still missing

It’s been more than 10 days since a glacial collapse sent freezing water, rocks and debris roaring down Nepal’s Bhotekoshi and Trishuli valleys.The death toll has risen to 1,357, while 5,326 people remain missing, according to Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority. Rescue teams have so far saved 13,583 people.The disaster has also inflicted an enormous economic cost. Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority estimates that the floods caused NPR 387.54 billion ($2.56 billion) in damage to property, housing and infrastructure. The government says its immediate four-month recovery effort will require another NPR 7.95 billion, or about $53 million, for roads, temporary shelters, drinking water and electricity.

The tragedy has let to tohusands being killed while over 5,000 are missing

But that is only the beginning.Nepal’s finance minister Swarnim Wagle told Reuters that the eventual reconstruction bill could reach $4 billion to $5 billion, roughly a tenth of Nepal’s annual economic output. The figure remains preliminary and could change as authorities complete detailed assessments.For a country with an economy of about $46 billion, the scale of the challenge is daunting.Nepal is not entering the crisis with unlimited fiscal room. It is still dealing with the legacy of the 2015 earthquake, while public debt has risen sharply over the past decade.The question now is simple but difficult: Where will the money to rebuild come from?

A tight fiscal position

Nepal’s government will have to shoulder part of the cost itself.It can reprioritise spending, use existing disaster-response resources and increase borrowing. But each option comes with a price.The IMF estimates Nepal’s public debt at 49.6% of GDP in FY2025-26, up from 48.1% a year earlier. It also expects the country to continue running a fiscal deficit as the government seeks to increase revenue and improve public-investment execution.A large reconstruction programme would therefore compete with spending on schools, hospitals, jobs and other infrastructure.Borrowing could help bridge part of the gap, but greater reliance on debt would increase future debt-servicing costs and leave less room for development spending.Nepal therefore needs not just money, but financing that can be mobilised quickly and channelled into reconstruction projects.

An economy already under strain

The disaster has hit sectors that Nepal has been relying on to strengthen its economy.Remittances remain the country’s biggest external financial cushion. The IMF expects workers’ remittances to reach $15.2 billion in FY2025-26, equivalent to 33.1 per cent of GDP.But remittances are household income, not government revenue. They support consumption and provide foreign exchange, but Kathmandu cannot simply redirect that money towards rebuilding public infrastructure.That makes sectors such as hydropower and tourism especially important to the recovery.Hydropower has been one of Nepal’s biggest growth opportunities, with the country seeking to harness its Himalayan rivers to generate electricity and expand exports to India. But at least 11 hydropower projects in the affected corridor have been damaged, knocking generating capacity offline.Tourism faces a different risk. Nepal’s trekking, mountaineering and pilgrimage industries depend heavily on access to mountain regions. Damaged roads and bridges could therefore disrupt visitor flows and hurt another important source of foreign exchange.Nepal now has to rebuild while some of the very sectors expected to drive future growth have themselves taken a hit.

Domestic financing: The first layer

The first layer of the reconstruction effort will come from Nepal’s own resources.The government can reprioritise its budget, divert spending towards damaged infrastructure and draw on disaster-response funds. It can also increase domestic or external borrowing.But these resources will not be enough on their own.The government will have to decide what gets rebuilt first. Roads and bridges reconnecting isolated communities, electricity infrastructure and housing for displaced families are likely to take priority over projects that can wait.Nepal’s own resources will therefore form the foundation of the financing package, rather than cover the entire reconstruction bill.

Insurance and private capital

Commercial assets provide another, albeit more limited, source of funding.Hydropower projects and other insured businesses can receive payouts for physical damage and, in some cases, business interruption.Nepal’s Insurance Authority had received 583 flood-related claims worth NPR 25.87 billion ($171 million) as of August 31. The figure represents reported claims and insured exposure rather than final payouts, with assessments still under way.Hydropower projects are expected to account for a significant share of those claims, given the concentration of damage along the affected river corridors.Insurance payouts could help companies repair or replace damaged assets, but they cannot finance public infrastructure such as roads, bridges and settlements.Private investment could provide another source of capital, particularly for hydropower. Companies can raise equity, borrow against future electricity revenues and use insurance proceeds to restore damaged facilities.But private capital has a natural limit.An investor can finance a power plant because it can sell electricity and generate a return. There is far less incentive to finance a remote road or bridge that provides a public benefit but generates no direct revenue.Public infrastructure will therefore continue to depend heavily on government and donor financing.

Development banks: The biggest external pool

The largest external financing pool is likely to come from international development institutions.The UN and humanitarian partners have already appealed for $49.6 million to help more than 84,000 people with food, shelter, healthcare, clean water and cash assistance over four months. The Asian Development Bank has separately approved a $5 million emergency grant.But these are emergency funds, not long-term reconstruction financing.For the rebuilding phase, Kathmandu can turn to institutions such as the World Bank and ADB for concessional loans, grants and project financing.Nepal already has a disaster-financing mechanism with the World Bank. In 2024, the bank approved $150 million in contingent financing under a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option, allowing the government to access funds after a qualifying natural disaster.Such instruments can provide immediate liquidity. But a reconstruction programme running into several billion dollars would require fresh commitments from multilateral lenders, bilateral donors and other development partners.

Bilateral aid

Nepal is also receiving assistance directly from other countries, although most of it so far has focused on emergency relief and rescue rather than long-term reconstruction.The UK has offered £5 million ($6.8 million) in aid, while South Korea has pledged $1 million in humanitarian assistance. The US initially committed $500,000 and later increased its contribution to $3.6 million for food and emergency supplies.India has provided relief supplies, rescue personnel and technical assistance, including more than 68 tonnes of relief material.

India hap launched special helplines for Indians seeking information

Nepal’s foreign ministry says it has received support from a wider group of countries, including Japan, Australia, Germany, Qatar, the UAE, China and Canada. It has also said Nepal has received monetary pledges from international partners, although the government has not published a consolidated country-by-country tally as of now.These contributions are significant for the immediate response. But the next phase will require something much larger: bilateral grants, concessional financing and project-specific support for reconstruction.For Kathmandu, grants would be particularly valuable because they would not add to its debt burden. But bilateral aid alone cannot close the financing gap.

Climate finance: Another potential source

Another potential source of funding is the international “loss and damage” fund, created after years of demands from vulnerable developing countries that they should receive financial support for climate-related destruction they did little to cause.The fund was agreed at the UN climate summit in Egypt in 2022 and formally operationalised at COP28 in Dubai in 2023. At COP28, countries agreed that the World Bank would host the fund temporarily and administer it as a financial intermediary.Governments contribute to the fund, but those contributions are voluntary rather than a mandatory bill imposed on particular countries. More than $720 million had been pledged by COP29 in 2024.Nepal is now seeking access to that money. Its foreign minister has called for $20 million from the loss-and-damage mechanism following the floods, arguing that Nepal contributes less than 0.1% of global greenhouse-gas emissions while facing severe climate risks.However, $20 million would cover only a tiny fraction of a potential $4 billion-$5 billion reconstruction bill.The loss-and-damage fund can therefore provide an additional source of financing, but it is unlikely to come close to funding Nepal’s entire recovery.The government is also turning to Parliament to assess in more specific terms how the disaster could affect Nepal’s economy and how it can tap climate finance. A seven-member Finance Committee sub-panel, formed on Wednesday (September 9), has been asked to study the economic impact of the August 26 floods and issues related to climate finance, with its report due by September 18.

The 2015 earthquake offers a blueprint

Nepal has a precedent for financing reconstruction on a multibillion-dollar scale.The 2015 earthquake caused around $7 billion in physical damage and generated reconstruction needs estimated at roughly $6.7 billion.At an international conference that year, donors and development partners pledged about $4.1 billion for Nepal’s reconstruction. The World Bank alone committed up to $500 million.That experience offers the clearest indication of what a financing package for the current disaster could look like.Nepal would put some of its own resources into reconstruction, while development partners provide grants and concessional loans and private investors finance commercially viable projects.But there is one major difference: Nepal now has a much larger debt burden than it did before the 2015 earthquake.That makes the terms of external financing particularly important. Grants and highly concessional loans would place significantly less pressure on government finances than commercial borrowing.

The cost that cannot be counted

Nepal is therefore facing a financing stack rather than a single source of money.The scale of the destruction means these sources will have to be combined and coordinated. To avoid substantially increasing its debt burden, Kathmandu will need a much larger international financing package, including grants and other assistance that does not have to be repaid, alongside concessional loans and other forms of financing.Even then, the $4 billion-$5 billion reconstruction estimate will not capture every cost.The economic loss from thousands of deaths and missing people, for instance, extends far beyond the value of damaged property and infrastructure. Families can lose their main source of income when a breadwinner dies, while survivors may face injuries, displacement, interrupted work and psychological trauma.Children may lose schooling. Businesses may lose workers and customers.These losses are much harder to quantify than a damaged road or power plant, but they can prolong the economic impact of the disaster for years.

How the disaster happened

The resilience question

There is one more complication: the final bill could rise if Nepal decides to rebuild differently.Replacing a bridge with another bridge in the same vulnerable location may restore a transport link quickly, but it does little to reduce the risk of another disaster.The World Bank estimates that Nepal needs $47.4 billion in adaptation investment between 2021 and 2050. That figure covers the country’s much broader climate-adaptation requirements and should not be confused with the current flood reconstruction bill.For Kathmandu, rebuilding presents a fundamental choice: replace damaged infrastructure as quickly and cheaply as possible, or spend more to make it more resilient.The second option may require greater upfront investment, but it could reduce the cost of future disasters.That choice is also likely to shape Nepal’s international financing appeal. Donors and development banks have increasingly linked reconstruction funding to resilience, disaster-risk reduction and climate adaptation.For now, Nepal’s immediate challenge is to finance a potential $5 billion reconstruction bill.Its bigger challenge is to ensure that the money does not simply rebuild what the floods destroyed, but helps build infrastructure capable of withstanding what comes next.