Nepali Economics 

By Prajwal Shrestha A political system is a tool for managing a nation. The system should be responsible for safeguarding national security, developing international relations through a strategic foreign policy and making the nation economically prosperous. Without economic prosperity, a nation cannot become strong. A good political system with good leaders makes the nation prosperous in all sectors whereas a bad political system with bad political leaders ruins the nation. Nepal’s present scenario is that the nation’s economy has been ruined by the political system and bad political leaders and the country has fallen into an economic trap. To some extent, the Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to destroying the national economy, nevertheless, due to the negligence performed by the Nepali political leaders and economic experts, the country is facing an economic trap. A nation’s economy cannot be different from a family’s economy. If the guardian or say the key person of the family is indisciplined or a gambler or a lazy guy, the family’s economy becomes worst. If the guardian is honest with the family and thinks betterment of the family, he will manage the family properly. The economic theory should be based on higher income and lower expenditure with good savings. If we go against this theory we have to face a bad economic situation. Talking about the nation’s economy, it is facing a crisis from different fronts. The government is spending funds in the non-productive sector alike a gambler. Due to the bad system, Nepal has become an import-based nation. The country’s economic situation has reached the extent that the government cannot collect targeted revenue if imports are declined. To meet the revenue, the government is insisting on imports. For decades, we were alerting the economic experts and also those people in the government for not encouraging imports but encouraging exports and helping the industries substitute imports. We remained alone while talking about such things as economists, policymakers, planners and policy implementers always encouraged revenue based on imports. Along with the introduction of the multiparty system, dozens of employment-based industries were closed down. When the unemployment problem was witnessed in the country, the government developed the plan to send our youths to foreign countries for dirty jobs. It is okay to send people abroad for foreign employment for a very short period. But the government wanted to make it permanent as they felt that if the youth force will go abroad, they will not create political problems in the country. Therefore, the ministers were found visiting different countries asking for employment for the Nepali labours. The other thing we had raised was that the remittance revenue received from Nepali workers should be spent on infrastructural development, contradicting that, according to reports, around 80 per cent of the remittance amount was spent for purchasing luxury goods imported from the third countries. More importantly, a healthy economic policy should be based on a larger portion of the government revenue should be spent on the development sector and a small portion of the government revenue should be spent on general expenditure, which is also known as non-productive sector i.e. salary, allowances etc. The government, in every budget, is found allotting a very nominal amount in the development sector and a higher budget in the general sector. On that too, the government is unable to spend the development fund allotted in the budget. The government’s inefficiency in spending development funds will have a chain effect. Besides, the nation has adopted an expensive political system in which, internal revenue is spent just to provide salary and allowance to those involved in the organs of the system. The government is relied on foreign debt to spend on the development sector. If the government and the political leaders don’t think about reducing non-productive sector expenditure, Nepal will face a serious economic crisis soon. The political system should be sustainable with the country’s revenue. Based on the country’s revenue trend, the present political system cannot sustain itself.