NPC projects $3,000 per capita income by 2030

Kathmandu, June 22

The National Planning Commission (NPC) has projected that the Per Capita Income (PCI) of a Nepali citizen will reach US$ 3,222 (at the current exchange rate) before 2030, the year when the country will be a middle income country from the developing one.

In its 'Needs assessment, costing and financing strategy for Nepal's Sustainable Development Goals', the planning body has estimated that the PCI will meet the per year average of Rs. 370,557 ($3,222) in the period of 2026-30.

Nepal's PCI in the current Fiscal Year 2018/19 is estimated at US$1,032 while it was $998 last year.

The country is currently a low-income economy as per the World Bank definition ($995 or less PCI). The multilateral donor identifies the countries with $996 to 3,895 PCI as the lower-middle-income economies.

Earlier, Nepal had made an aim to achieve $3,000 PCI by 2030.

According to the NPC, the PCI will be Rs. 149,280 on an average from 2020-22 and Rs. 218,084 from 2013-25.

Likewise, the household income will reach the average of Rs. 1.48 million per annum in 2026-30 of which about 8.9 per cent is expected to finance the SDG investment requirement.

"More affluent households are expected to contribute to financing poverty through a contributory social protection system, paying for recurrent or operation-and-maintenance cost for public utilities and services designed for addressing the poverty," read the report.

It said that the overall households are expected to contribute about 11 per cent of their PCI in financing SDG investment through the out-of-pocket expenses.

"This expense is affordable and does not restraining access to basic services, especially for the poor. This estimation is in line with the global PCI out-of-pocket spending expected during the implementation of period," said the NPC.

However, it said that although the affluent households could bear some of the intervention costs, it has made clear that user fees should not be plugged in to contribute to cost of universal social services such as primary school education, adult literacy programmes, improving gender equality, basic health care, nutritional interventions, and transport infrastructure.

Over the 15 years of SDG implementation period the public sector is expected to contribute about 55 per cent of the total SDG investment requirement, Rs. 30,375 billion, with the highest proportion going for poverty alleviation sector followed by agriculture, health, education, gender, water and sanitation, transport infrastructure, climate actions and governance improvement.

Likewise, the private sector is expected to finance 36.6 per cent, cooperatives and non-government organisations 4.3 per cent and household 4.4 per cent of the total investment required.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 22 June 2019.