For clarity in SEZ
Madhukar SJB Rana’s opinion that Nepal should first intensify labour and structural reforms rather than copy the Chinese-style SEZ is perfectly valid (Nubiz January 2008 issue). Going by the list Rana has presented in the beginning of his article, only those countries that are migrating from the previous controlled economic regime to liberal one and/ or face difficulty in fast reforms due to huge geographical and population size are resorting to SEZ. Even in China, Deng Xiaoping initiated this idea as an experiment in migrating to open economy and the Chinese concept is still not of creating small free-trade enclosures within a city: entire island (e.g. Xian) or an entire county is declared an SEZ there. Nepal should learn from that and go for declaring an entire district or even an entire zone an SEZ, if we must have SEZ. Still the first priority should be to liberalise the entire economic structure.
- Pradip Banstola
Biratnagar
Global Benchmarks
Nepali press is routinely reporting about the change in Nepal’s status in global benchmark indicators like Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International and Doing Business Index of the World Bank. But the authorities do not seem serious about improving the country’s performance in those benchmarks. If there is any improvement made by the country in these indicators, the same is never seen used in marketing the country while scouting for foreign investment. The article under Kautalya Niti that appeared in New Business Age January 2008 issue should be an eye opener.
- SB Banjade
Palpa
Issues in Nepal-India Trade
The articles you included in the cover story section of January 2008 have analysed only the tip of the iceberg in the Nepal-India trade relations. In fact, the ground realities necessitate a complete integration of the Nepali economy with that of India. This is a compulsion for both of the countries. Nepal can’t survive without the Indian market and India can’t sustain high speed growth without Nepal’s hydropower no matter how much it tries to develop nuclear power. As we all know, nuclear power has its associated risks which may be devastating.
Therefore, both countries should speed up the dialogue and remove all the misunderstandings and suspicions about each other as soon as possible and start new things at whatever possible scale so that there will be trust at the grassroots level about the intentions of each other. If the power projects licensed or being licensed to the Indian investors are implemented fast and they prove to lead towards a win-win situation, that will help in this regard very much.
- Pradyumna Sapkota
Baluwatar, Kathmandu
