Mr. Birodh Shrestha is one of such small businessmen. He has average-sized shops in RB Complex, Purano Bhansar and in the Super Market at New Road. He says he is doing business for the sake of keeping himself busy. "There is no profit at all, business is so dull that to talk about the profit is meaningless," he laments. In his opinion no businessman of his standard is earning profits for quite sometime now. The tough competition and lack of customers have made it difficult for these businessmen to earn enough for their living. There are very few people like Shrestha who are surviving on the ancestral property. "In order to keep myself busy and in the expectation of the return of good old days I have been bearing losses from my own property," he says.

The readymade stores are losing money because of high rentals, under - cutting among the peers and unhealthy competition waged by the importers and wholesalers themselves. To add to the already harsh situation many unemployed and new generation people are entering this business with whatsoever amount their parents can provide them. Such newcomers, in a bid to survive and attract customers, resort to any sort of compromise, which makes the business environment even murkier.

The business situation is so bad that the smaller businessmen can neither continue nor stop at once. The shops that are paying as high as 50-60 thousand a month in rent and related expenses at the Super Market are on the verge of collapse. These businessmen are not running their shops just because they are waiting for the shiny days, but because if they quit the business they would need to clear all their dues, which would immediately cause bankruptcy and they would be languishing on the roads.

The plight of small businessmen is not restricted to only the case of the keepers of ready-made stores in the capital and other parts. The small industrialists are also facing huge problems because of the current gloomy economic situation. The smaller industrialists are the one who are producing low cost goods from low investment. These industrialists are facing competition not only from the local industries, but they are facing the danger of extinction thanks to unregulated entries of goods from both northern and southern borders. Thanks to the big industries of India and low cost electronic and other goods being dumped by big Chinese industries, the smaller industries are now on the verge of bankruptcy.

It is but obvious that the whole world is now an open market for all and only the fittest survive in the market. But this is a slogan only in the text book which is not followed completely by even the economic giants and industrial super powers. The USA and the European Union are still fighting over the subsidy they have been providing to the agriculture. Japan and the USA are still debating the government support to export oriented industries each other are providing.

In the name of WTO, the small economies are being threatened of open and free competition. But the WTO framework virtually puts no pressure on the LDCs (the 49 Least Developed Countries recognized by UN, and Nepal is one of them) to force their industries fight free in the market with the MNCs (multinational companies). In fact there are many provisions within WTO which allow LDCs to make any kind of restriction imports with proper justification to save their own industries.

So the plight and agony of the small businessmen is not the reason caused by the international scenario. I believe if the government could formulate rules and regulations to control dumping of goods from other countries, check unhealthy competition within the country and restrict monopoly and monopolistic behaviour, the situation could have become much better. Even in the USA, the Antitrust Department stops big companies from killing the smaller ones. As an example, to protect smaller software industries and to ensure competition, a US court has given verdict to divide the global giant Microsoft.

The major threat felt by smaller Nepali businessmen are also the undue and undercutting competition from big houses, smuggling from India and China, dumping from China through Khasa and the ever-increasing tax burden imposed by the government as well as the extra tax levied by the Maoists. If these problems are not taken care of with urgency the mass of unemployed and agonized people is bound to increase to further destabilize the nation’s identity itself.