newbusinessage/Nepal%20Leadership%20Summit/1767 ‘Foreign Investment Required’ We have spent a long time focusing on the political revolution and now we need to shift the focus to the economic side. But all we have to understand the interrelation between political and economical revolution. In order to have economic development, we have to trace out our shortcomings - what are our strengths and what are the hindrances to economic development? One of our major problems is absolute poverty and absolute backwardness, which is the basic weakness in our economic development, and which has led the country to a sluggish pace of development of not more the 2 per cent average growth in 50 years. There has not been much change in the real income level of the people, and this small economic growth is wiped away by the constant population growth. Therefore, we need a vision to see where we will be in the upcoming 10 years. For that, we have to bring in foreign investment and utilize our domestic resources to stimulate economic development During our government, we had focused on taking growth to a double digit rate. For ten per cent growth rate 40 per cent of the GDP has to be invested. As the GDP being NRs 1700billion we have to invest 700bilion per year. One of the basic sources for it is internal tax revenue - which approximately generates NRs. 300bn out of which NRs. 150bn can be invested fordevelopment - the other source is remittance which is approximately NRs 600bn out of which if we invest NRs 200bn, we can still arrange another 200-300 billion form other internal sources. we should be able to bring in another 200 billion from foreign investment. Therefore, it is important to mobilize the national capital as well as foreign investment in order to reach the economic growth of double digit. And if we follow this economic strategy and invest in basic economic infrastructure like electricity, road, airports and social infrastructure like education and health, not only will we witness growth in GDP but also growth in per capita income from USD750 to USD3000. In order to achieve this growth, there also has to be a political commitment, consensus and most importantly, a stable government for five years to govern the country - whether it is the nepali Congress, the UML or the unified CPN Maoist or any other party. As far as the UCPN (M) is concerned, it is totally committed towards inclusive development to reduce economic and social disparities. Secondly, we have to maintain a stable policy with the two rapidly developing neighbouring countries India and China. We have to turn into an investment pool for these countries in order to stimulate our development. Lastly, we have to eradicate political and institutional corruption and until we eradicate this, there will always be hindrances in development and investment. In order to mitigate this problem, we have to be transparent. Forceful donation has to stop and the system should be able to bring some budget to the political parties which will give rise to a transparent political party system.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 08:48:46 +0000