Resurrecting Retail
Your Cover Story entitled Retail Resurrection (Nubiz December 2008)
should open the eyes of the policymakers. No country can develop its
manufacturing sector by suppressing the retail trade.
But in Nepal, retailers are derided as profiteers whereas they are actually service providers – bringing the goods to the doorsteps of the consumers. If this trade is provided the same prestige as is accorded to manufacturing, it can attract modern managerial professionals in it and that will soon remove the malpractices such as artificial shortages and excessive profiteering.
Moreover, as Nepal is trying to regain its almost lost position of a premium tourism market, a booming retail sector can help in it. The Malaysian example you have presented gives the proof to this hypothesis.
But will the present government that is trying to bring under the control of the Maoist party everything from manufacturing to retail allow the retail trade to become truly professional?
Subodh Khadka
Kamalpokhari, Kathmandu
Banking Cartel
Resta Jha’s article on Treasury
Management in Nepal
(Nubiz December 2008) exposes how backward the Nepali money market is and what needs to be done by the banks individually and as a group and by the regulator.
The ongoing phenomenon that forces the banks to maintain a high margin on foreign exchange dealings must be brought to an end as soon as possible if we want to make Nepali producers competitive in the international market.
Does the Nepal Rastra Bank as the regulator of the market have the will to make those necessary changes in the policies and rules ?
Binod Shrestha
Patan
Housing as Industry
Om Rajbhandary, the CEO of
The Comfort Housing, has
explained how the housing business can be an industry in itself managed by professionals. (Nubiz December 2008).
The perception so far about the housing business is such that the people think it is under the control of those who diverted to this business as their previous profession of constructing projects under contract from the government was in decline. Since the businessmen since don’t have high regard towards such people as they are perceived as hands-in- gloves with the government officials in all the corruption scandals, bringing out the actual information about the housing industry (as you did by publishing this interview) is highly commendable.
Sarojini Khakurel
Kamalpokhari, Kathmandu
New Industrial Policy
Your curtain raiser news story
about the forthcoming
Industrial Policy triggers a number of questions.
As you have reported, the draft policy proposes to ban lockouts and strikes in the industries set up in Special Economic Zones. It is difficult to believe as the present government has been doggedly pursuing a policy of intimidating the industrialists by unleashing terror through the trade union affiliated to the leader of the governing coalition.
Similarly, it is difficult to believe that he draft policy has promised to encourage outsourcing because the very essence of the philosophy espoused by the leader of the ruling coalition is against the basic idea of outsourcing.
Therefore, the draft you have reported about must be a begging bowl that the government is sending around to please the donors. It will be never implemented under the Maoist-led government even if it is finally promulgated.
Bivha Nepali
Damauli
