After completing four years and four months as Nepali ambassador to China, Mahesh Kumar Maskey is all set to leave for Kathmandu on Monday (May 9).

In an event here on Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi lauded the initiatives taken by Maskey in strengthening the Sino-Nepal relationship, Nepali Embassy in Beijing said.

“Foreign Minister Wang reiterated obliging with the commitments made by both sides before and after the visit of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli,” a senior official at Nepal’s mission in Beijing told the Post.

According to the official, Wang stressed on the need of political stability in Nepal in order to make sure that the agreements accorded by both the government witness a logical end at earliest possible point.

Likewise, envoy Maskey thanked China and Chinese people for their unwavering support to Nepal during and after last year’ April earthquake and hoped that the bilateral relationship would strengthen further.

“The transit agreement between Nepal and China has garnered accolades all over. I have conveyed a message to both sides that this agreement needs to be enacted at the possible earliest,” Maskey told the Post.

The government of Nepal has already named CPN-UML leader and former Minister for Foreign Affairs Mahendra Bahadur Pandey to lead Nepal’s diplomatic mission in China.

At a time when Nepal’s political relationship with southern neighbor India has hit a bottom-rock, naming a new envoy to China to replace Maskey shows the importance that government has set towards China.

Maskey had played a significant role when earthquake struck Nepal last year and also worked to make the China visit of Prime Minister Oli a historic one with numerous agreements penned in between the two nations.