Amend Black-marketing Act: Businessmen

Kathmandu, Oct. 29: Businessmen Sunday demanded that the Black-marketing Act should be amended.

A delegation of Nepal Chambers of Commerce (NCC) led by its Chairman Rajesh Kazi Shrestha, in a meeting with the Chief Secretary Lok Darshan Regmi, demanded the amendment of the Black-marketing and Some Other Social Offenses and Punishment Act, 2032.

According to the delegation, the 4-decade old legal instrument is outdated and is not business friendly, and has largely failed to address the problems in the market.

“Some of the provisions in the Act are against the open market principles. It has become an instrument in the hands of the government officials to create trouble for the businessmen,” said Shrestha.

He said that new amended Act should clarify the areas of marketing monitoring for the ministries of Finance, Commerce and Supply.

The delegation also urged the chief secretary to make provisions whereby the banks and financial institutions remain open in the public holidays other than announced in prior.

Chief Secretary Regmi assured the delegation that the government would not treat the private sector as its opposition, and said that the cooperation and collaboration between the two was must to lead the country on the path of development.

First Vice-President of NCC Gyanendra Ratna Tuladhar, Second VP Rajendra Malla, General Secretary Kamlesh Kumar Agrawal, secretaries Devendra Bhakta Shrestha, Santosh Kumar Pandey and Parshuram Dahal were in the delegation.

Export decreased by almost 5 per cent

Kathmandu, Oct. 29: Goods export has increased by 3 per cent to Rs. 13.58 billion in the first two months of the current Fiscal year 2017/18, compared to a growth of 7.7 per cent in the same period of the last fiscal.

According to the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB)’s report on Current Macroeconomic and Financial Situation of Nepal, based on the first two months of the fiscal year, the merchandise export growth was shrunk due to the decreasing export to India, the largest trade partner of the country.

“In the first two months, export to India decreased 3.3 per cent whereas export to China and other countries increased 44.6 per cent and 9.7 per cent respectively,” said the NRB.

Export of cattle feed, thread, readymade garments, oil cake, vegetable ghee among other increased while the export of juice, cardamom, woollen carpet, GI pipes, toothpaste and other products was decreased.

But, goods imports increased 11 per cent to Rs. 165.41 billion in the two months compared to a growth of 43.4 per cent last year.  

The export through Birgunj Customs, Dry Port Customs, Bhairahawa Customs, Krishnanagar Customs and Kailali Customs decreased whereas import was decreased through Bhairahawa, Tribhuvan International Airport and Kanchanpur Customs.

According to the central bank, consumer price inflation has risen to 3.4 per cent in mid-September 2017 from 2.3 per cent in mid-August 2017.

It said that the spike in prices of vegetables on accounts of floods and inundation in mid-August this year had pushed overall prices up.

Food inflation has eased to 1.8 per cent in mid-September this year from 7.7 per cent in the corresponding period of last year. A fall in prices of pulses and legumes by 23.7 per cent together with spices by 4.2 per cent has helped ease overall food inflation.

Price of vegetables increased by 8.9 per cent and alcoholic drinks 8.8 per cent during that period.

Non-food inflation decelerated to 4.7 per cent from 8.1 per cent last year.

Similarly, the workers remittances increased 0.7 per cent to Rs. 115.55 billion in the review period compared to 6.6 percent in the same period of the last year.

Consequently, net transfer receipt increased 0.4 per cent to Rs. 130.65 billion. Such receipt had increased 3.7 per cent in the same period of the last year. 

Likewise, the current account registered a deficit of Rs. 17.88 billion in the first two months of current FY.

Such deficit was Rs. 11.12 billion in the same period of the previous year.

Similarly, the overall BOP remained at deficit of Rs. 5.87 billion in the review period compared to a deficit of Rs. 3.50 billion in the same period of the previous year.

In the first two months, Nepal received capital transfer amounting to Rs. 1.84 billion and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow of Rs. 5.10 billion.

In the same period of the previous year, capital transfer and FDI inflow had amounted to Rs. 1.54 billion and Rs. 2.19 billion respectively. 

No IRC before interbank rate reaches 3 per cent

Kathmandu, Oct. 28: The Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has said that it would not implement the interest rate corridor (IRC) until the inter-bank rate reaches to 3 per cent.

Executive Director of the NRB Nara Bahadur Thapa said that the central monetary authority would use financial instruments to mop up the liquidity from the market to push the interbank rate up and implement the interest rate corridor.

“Our current focus is to raise the interbank rate to 3 per cent. The central bank has mopped up Rs. 57 billion in the first quarter of the current fiscal year 2017/18, and additional Rs. 40 billion will be pulled from the banks and financial institutions (BFIs) within a couple of months,” he said.

As per Thapa, the lower interbank rate would promote interest rate arbitrage, whereby the BFIs might involve in capitalising on the interest rate. 

But, the central bank couldn’t implement the IRC, even after the conclusion of the first quarter of the current fiscal.

The NRB is still developing the procedure for the corridor implementation.

According to Thapa, the details and designs for the full implementation of the new system are being developed and a team of experts is studying the practices from other countries so as to incorporate the good practices from the international market.

He also claimed that the NRB was in ‘wait and see’ situation following mobilisation of Rs. 57 billion internal loan in the first quarter of this fiscal.

The budget of this year aims at raising Rs. 145 billion internal loan, so the NRB and the Ministry of Finance were busy in preparing Issue Calendar and Auction Calendar, and mobilising loan.

“We were studying the impact of the loan mobilisation in the market. It is very important to stabilize the market. The NRB didn’t want to use multiple instruments at the same time as it might have created the liquidity crisis,” he said.

Furthermore, the financial sector regulator has kept itself ready to cooperate with the government in raising the internal loan that the latter might needed to manage expenditure after sending Rs. 75 billion to the local bodies.

The central government is facing about Rs. 38 billion budget deficit in the first quarter of this fiscal year.

Aiming at reducing the interest rate volatility, the NRB had implemented the interest rate corridor since the FY 2016/17 with 7 per cent upper ceiling, and through the Monetary Policy 2017/18, it had announced to settle the interest rate at minimum 3 per cent and maximum 7 per cent.

Thapa remarked that the market rate should be around 5 per cent.

According to the Monetary Policy, the provision of taking standing liquidity facility (SLF) as an upper bound of IRC is continued, and a provision of taking two weeks’ repo rate as a policy rate has been fixed at 5 per cent, a continuation of the previous provision.

“A provision of taking two weeks’ deposit collection rate as a lower bound of the corridor has been kept unchanged. However, such deposit collection rate has been fixed at 3 per cent. It is expected that this revision in interest corridor arrangement will help in minimizing interest rate volatility,” reads the policy.

The central bank has been saying that to manage liquidity, control market fluctuation and dynamic stabilization of the market, interest rate corridor is needed.

Socioeconimic transformation main agenda: Bairagi

Kathmandu, Oct. 28: Foreign Secretary Shankar Das Bairagi Friday shed light on  Nepal’s achievements at the United Nations Security Council Debate on Women, Peace and Security, towards promoting and protecting rights and interests of women since the adoption of the UNSC resolution 1325 in 2006.

“With the stability in Nepal following the successful peace process the next national agenda would be the socioeconomic transformation of the country,” he told the international community.

The event was organised in New York and was presided over by France, the president of the Security Council for the month of October 2017.

According to a press statement issued by the Permanent Mission of Nepal to the United Nations at New York, the debate featured ministers and senior level representatives from member states.

Bairagi updated the Security Council on Nepal’s National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security pursuant to the UNSC resolutions 1325 and 1820.

He also underlined the importance of engaging women in the management of conflict and post-conflict peace-building.

The Foreign Secretary discussed matters of common interests during his meeting with the President of the General Assembly Mtroslav Lajcak.

“On the occasion, Bairagi appreciated the role of the General Assembly in convening various high-level meeting on agendas of global importance and requested him to prioritize the agenda in favour of the neediest countries including the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Landlocked LDCs,” read the statement.

President Lajcak briefed about the upcoming high-level events including on youth, water, conflict prevention and financing for development that he would be holding during the 72^nd session of the UNGA.

“While appreciating Nepal’s active participation in past General Assembly sessions, he shared his confidence that Nepal will continue to do so in the days ahead, given Nepal’s significant contributions to peacekeeping and other multilateral initiatives,” said the statement.

Permanent representative of Nepal to the UN Durga Prasad Bhattarai was also present during the meeting.

Training organised to enhance capacity of officials

Kathmandu, Oct. 28: With an aim of strengthening the capacity of the Technical Task-Force and contractors to integrate gender analysis methods and tolls in climate risk assessment and adaptation planning in the agriculture under the Nepal’s Integrating Agriculture National Adaptation Plans Programme (NAP-Ag), a workshop was organised.

The three-day workshop on the topic was held in Kathmandu as part of the activities of the United Nations Development Programme-Food and Agriculture Organization (UNDP-FAO)’s NAP-Ag programme.

According to the organisers, the training sought to strengthen the gender and adaptation capacity of participating government officials in terms of monitoring and evaluating the NAP-Ag project, and more importantly in terms of their adaptation work over the longer term.

The programme is funded by the International Climate Initiative of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety.

The training tried to establish a common understanding of key gender concepts and linkages between gender and climate risk assessment and adaptation planning.
“The training included working through a gender-sensitive situation analysis using tools such as the Capacity and Vulnerability Assessment (CVA) framework and Problem Tree. The CVA framework helped participants to identify women’s and men’s strengths and weaknesses that determine the impact of a crisis on them as well as their ability to respond,” reads a statement issued by the organisers.
“Following the session, I feel that the workshop has enabled me to strengthen my previous concept of gender integration in programme planning, and monitoring and evaluation’’ said Suresh Babu Tiwri, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and National Focal Person of the project.
In Nepal, the NAP-Ag Programme seeks to enhance the understanding of climate change impacts on the agriculture sector.
The project aims to build the technical capacities of Ministry of Agriculture Development (MoAD) and other relevant ministries to integrate climate change concerns into relevant national and sectoral plans and budgets.
Over 25 participants attended from ministries of Agricultural Development, Livestock Development, Forestry and Soil Conservation, Population and Environment, Information, Federal Affairs and Local Development, and Home Affairs as well as the National Agricultural Research Council, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, National Planning Commission, Department of Food Technology and Quality Control, Department of Agriculture, Department of Livestock Services, Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, FAO Nepal, and UNDP Nepal. Association for Development of Environment and People in Transition-Nepal (ADAPT-Nepal) and PricewaterhouseCoopers Limited, the service providers engaged to undertake the climate risk assessment and adaptation planning initiative at the local level also participated.