PM stresses collective efforts to contain COVID-19

Kathmandu, July 21

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba said that the deadly COVID-19 pandemic should be fought unitedly by the government, private sector and other stakeholders.

"All should drive their energy and resources for development," he said while speaking at the inaugural session of the 18^th Annual General Meeting of the Confederation of Nepalese Industries (CNI) in the Capital on Wednesday.

Finance Minister Janardan Sharma said that the country had the challenge of converting the consumption economy into production economy.

"Nepal can substitute many goods that we are currently importing, especially the Rs. 215 billion imports of agricultural goods and food items can be replaced with domestic production," he said. According to him, the 'Make in Nepal' campaign was timely but the producers and exporters must maintain the quality and charge competitive price so that it can prevail in the domestic as well as the international markets.

Indicating to the possibility of economic growth in Nepal, Minister Sharma maintained that economy and people in the country both needed vaccines. "Relief programmes are the vaccines for the economy that rehabilitate the businesses and industries. The government will soon announce relief programmes," he said.

He also stated that the COVID-19 pandemic had taught a lesson that the country should be self-reliant in the goods of basic needs, and Nepal should make a new national aspiration for the same. 'Make in Nepal-Swedeshi campaign' – a programme jointly announced by the government and CNI to ramp up production and exports and create employment – could be instrumental in achieving this goal, he said.

The Swedshi campaign aims to spur industrial growth by registering 1,000 industries in a year, creating 1,500 jobs and achieving the exports worth US$ 4.6 billion in the next five years. The size of exports in the last fiscal year was about $1.25 billion.

According to CNI, the programme has the objective to increase the industrial share in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 22 per cent by 2025 and 25 per cent by 2030. Nepal aims to become a middle income country by 2030.

Employment generation, export promotion and import substitution, innovation, skills and technology transfer, lifting sick industries and investment promotion are the need of the day, said FM Sharma.

President Emeritus of the CNI and lawmaker, Binod Choudhary, urged the government to support in the promotion of service sector which has been one of the most COVID-19 affected areas. Stating that Nepal had tremendous opportunities in service sector, he maintained that the country's growth could be based on the development of this sector.

President of CNI, Satish Kumar More, indicated at the need to design and develop programmes and strategy focusing from the production of the goods to their marketing.

"There have been multiple efforts to improve exports but they end up with less benefits. Weak infrastructure, absence of effective policy and programmes in export promotion, bureaucratic hurdles and shortage of skilled human resources have been the stumbling blocks in the export trade," he said.

 Published in The Rising Nepal on 22 July 2021.