FNCCI urges foreign investors to come to Nepal

 Kathmandu, Jan. 20

The Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FNCCI) has urged investors and businessmen of  the Asian countries to come to Nepal for investment.

“Nepal is located between the two largest markets with 2.7 billion population of the world. It has open border and duty free access to India while China has granted duty free access for about 8,000 products,” chairperson of FNCCI’s Bi-national and NRN Coordination Forum Desh Bandhu Basnet (Ajit) informed the investors at ‘The Economic state of play in the Asian Cooperation Dialogue Member Countries’ organised during the Asian Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) on Wednesday.

The meeting was organised as a side-line event of the Foreign Minister’s Meeting of the ACD. It was organised by the government of Turkey.

In addition to this, Nepal’s 77 products have duty free access in the United States and duty free quota free access to the European Union. It has high potential in tourism, agriculture, clean energy and minerals as well.

“The country is endowed with young working age population, low cost of labour. It is the member of SAARC, BIMSTEC, WTO, BRI, MIGA and UNCTAD,” Basnet said.

He also told the investors about the facility of two ports in India and seven in China, including three dry ports.

“Having such attractive potential for trade, tourism and investment, as well as advantageous location, I would like to invite businessmen from all the 35 members of ACD nations, to come to Nepal to establish business relationship,” he said in the conference organised virtually.

He emphasised on boosting the existing trade relations and exploring the new products for trade, and improving people to people relations among the member nations to promote trade connectivity.

Meanwhile, the FNCCI has expanded its Start-up and Innovation Committee.

The business body on Wednesday added Siddanta Raj Pandey and Suman Shakya as the joint-chairpersons and Prakash Dev Palikhe, Niraj Khanal, Dipendra Chaulagain, Mausami Shrestha, Sumana Shrestha and Swarna Tamrakar as members.

Likewise, Tenzing Sonar Gomsar and Kabiraj Joshi are inducted as the invitee members.

The advisors of the committee are Om Raj Bhandari, Saurabh Jyoti and Anil Chitrakar.

The meeting of the committee chaired by Ranjit Acharya decided to arrange seed capital for about 50 start-ups.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 21 January 2021.