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Business Optimism
By Madan Lamsal
Just two days after the election, the president of a chamber spoke candidly to a gathering of about 200 members on the consequences of the present war as well as Nepal’s current economic situation. The keen interest in the president’s talk was heightened by that day’s news that he would not rest until business confidence was restored.
In his talk, the president covered the current climate for business, the pros and cons of the new monetary policy, the effects of rising unemployment, the impact of the new national budget and the dangers of the growing budget deficit.
“Economic growth has more to do with psychology than science,” said he. “How well our economy performs will depend on optimism as well as on the interest rate. Today the optimism of the business sector is at the lowest. It is due to the lack of security. Therefore, I call upon the banks to help us regain our optimism by agreeing to extend additional loan without security. How can we offer you security when the government is not able to provide us security? Banks should also forget about the interest as we too are losing interest in running our businesses. As we know that banks make money out of thin air [he was obviously referring to the credit creation function of the banks], they cannot ask us any money against such money which they create out of thin air. You should think that the money went back to where it came from – i.e. thin air. However, we should be allowed to charge the customers a hefty price as by way of factory emissions we make the air thick, not thin.”
The president also talked about the ways to solve the country’s energy crisis. “Energy comes from water and water is something that is flowing freely down the river. Therefore, the Nepal Electricity Authority must not charge us for the energy that we consume. How can you charge us for something that is produced out of something that is available for free? Freedom begets freedom. Therefore, something produced from a free resource should be made available for free. Moreover, we businesses are providing bread and butter to the labourers and serving the consumers. How can you charge us money while we are doing charity? However, the Authority should pay a very good price for the electricity it buys from the independent power producers as they are independent and belong to the private sector.”
Talking about the ongoing Maoist war, the President exhorted the Maoists to come to the negotiating table and stop the violence. “Violence is always bad,” he said and advised the Maoists to see some Hindi movies in which the end result of violence is always shown to be bad. He also called upon the Maoists to stop asking businesses for donations and said it is now time for reverse donation. “We gave you donations when we had been earning money. Now that you have already caused the closure of most of the factories, how can we pay you? Instead, you have the cash now and we are the beggars, so it is your turn to donate money to us so that we can survive and have some optimism.”
Then he turned to the donor communities and urged them to stop pressing the central bank and the government to collect loans that have not been repaid. “The word donor means someone who donates. It is totally against the spirit of donation to ask for repayment of donated money. We, the business community, never ask the Maoists or the government bureaucrats to return the donation we gave them, though we happily accepted the privileges that these parties provided us in return. Donors should be happy that our government is providing them with so many privileges in return of the donation, e.g. the privilege to dictate when and by how much to increase the prices of various public utilities.”
He concluded his speech by warning all the concerned – the government, the banks, the Maoists and the donors – that if they do not listen to what he has said and behave accordingly, he would issue a press release repeating the same things to be printed in the readers’ column in the newspapers.
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