Nation heading towards the path of bankruptcy

If we will go through the recent economic reports produced by the government organs, we can read that the nation is facing a massive deficit in its foreign trade; a deficit in the balance of payment; foreign debt doubled in four years, etc. It means the economic indicators are negative.

The only sector that is foreign employment, which has retained our foreign currency reserve. It means, the nation is losing the other sources of earning foreign currency and we are solely dependent on foreign employment to retain our foreign currency reserve.

If the government will not introduce correction measures in the economy and if the government will not reduce its expenditure towards the non-productive sector, sure, the country’s debt burden is going to be inclined rapidly in the days to come. There is no sign of an increase in our exports shortly. But the government is reluctant to discourage imports of luxury items such as television screens, motorbikes, expensive luxury vehicles, etc.. As the government is collecting from 250 to 300 percent of import tax from such items, it doesn’t want to lose the tax revenue by discouraging imports of such items. Therefore, it is sure that the nation is going to face a trade deficit further.

The Nepali economy has already fallen under the trap as the government needs an additional amount to run the present expensive federal structures developed with the idea of providing jobs to the political workers. To feed those political workers in the federal government, provincial governments, and local governments, the government is bound to squeeze its citizens by imposing different taxes and it is compelled to seek foreign and domestic debts. If such a trend will continue, soon, Nepal needs to seek foreign debt to pay back the interests of such debts.

There is planning commission for developing long-term economic strategies. The Commission is defunct

the due to politics. Different government organizations are constituted for developing monitory policy, economic policy but they are encouraging for trading rather than the industrial investment. The government has failed to develop an investmentfriendly environment with a peaceful labour force. The labour organizations under different political parties have become the main source of income for the political parties. Due to the disturbances created by the labour organizations, the investors are discouraged. Our political parties are solely dependent on donations from the industries/industrialists. There are such a large number of political parties and all of them are seeking donations from the industrialists. The industrialists, therefore, try to escape the political leaders.

Moreover, the government and political leaders, who have become the agents of those business brokers, are unable to think betterment of the nation. For instance, encouraging money laundering, the substitute budget present by Finance Minister Janardan

Sharma has decided not to seek the source of income if the investment is for infrastructural development. This will obviously benefit those who are holding black money. We can substitute many foreign products including reducing consumption of the petro-products by constructing the reservoir model hydropower plant but the fact is that we have ended load-shedding by importing electricity from India. In such an adverse environment and with such adverse government policy, one cannot hope for economic prosperity.