Nepali Economics

By Prajwal Shrestha

We all are aware that the political leaders are in a hurry to go to power just to loot the nation. They don’t go to power to serve the nation and people. The majority government of the Nepal Communist Party led by K.P. Sharma Oli was toppled down through a setting in the court. NCP was split into three political parties as Oli alone enjoyed power and other leaders were unable to taste the fruits of power. By hook and crook, the five-party alliance government has been formed under the leadership of Sher Bahadur Deuba. It has already completed six months in office but we are unable to see any visible work of the government. All the economic indicators are negative and leaders in the government are not worried about the economic situation. We are aware that since the nation adopted multiparty democracy, the downfall of all the government undertakings, which were earning a profit, started to face trouble, and finally, many of them have already been shut down. Some are alive but seriously sick. The Royal Nepal Airlines, which was known to be the best airline in the South Asian region, is seriously sick. One aircraft is grounded for more than a week creating a loss worth above ten million rupees per day. According to sources, some of the board members, protesting the present Tourism Minister, are performing non-cooperation. They are not worried about the loss faced by the Corporation but making the board meeting their prestige issue. Sources informed that without approval from the board, the maintenance works of the aircraft cannot be conducted.       

The two sets of rail are stuck for more than a year but the government is not in a hurry to operate them. 

A horrible scenario of the trade deficit has been witnessed. According to the recent report of the past six months, the present deficit is larger than the country’s budget volume. The trade deficit is not going to be reduced in the near future as we don’t have any production ready to export but we cannot reduce the size of imports as we didn’t do homework on the possible scenario. Such a situation has been surfaced as the political leaders in the government never gave priority to the economic agendas, rather, they continued to loot on the government coffer. 

More serious thing is that the foreign currency reserve has also been declined as an impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The government can hardly manage foreign currency for the imports for seven months. The government is trying to lend money from the International Monitory Fund but how many months it can manage foreign currency for imports? The permanent solution is substituting imports and increasing imports. For example, petroleum products have strongly influenced our imports. We can, to some extent, reduce the import of petroleum products by introducing e-vehicles against the petroleum products operating vehicles and providing electricity to the factories at a subsidized price. First of all, the government should start operating e-vehicles then the general public will also start using e-vehicles. The government should start the process of converting all the dumped old government vehicles with battery operating vehicles. 

However, we see a lack of vision for looking towards the national interests among the leaders. They are running behind pity personnel interests.