This New Year's Eve in Kathmandu it was hard to believe that Nepal has been under a crippling economic embargo for the past three months. There were big traffic jams at places like Thamel, Durbar Marg and Jhamsikhel, 10 at night, as people rushed to secure a rare table in their favorite watering holes from where to welcome the new year. The jams mostly consisted of the ubiquitous white taxis, which were making a killing as they charged two to three times the normal fares to ferry adventure seekers on the cold night. But where did they get the petrol? Most private petrol pumps are shut. You have to line up for up to half a day to be eligible for 10 liters of the liquid gold, once a week. The only way these taxis would still be able to operate, night and day, uninterrupted, is if they had made an alternative arrangement for petrol. And they had. For at least the past couple of weeks you would be able to get as much fuel as you wanted, both for your vehicle and your kitchen, if you knew where to look.Over the past fortnight there has been a three-fold increase in official import of petrol, diesel and LPG from India—and this is discounting hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel reportedly smuggled into Nepal in jerry cans by residents of border areas. On December 28th, 80 tankers of diesel, 12 tankers of petrol 16 bullets of LPG entered Nepal from India. Then, on December 29th, 135 tankers of diesel, 30 tankers of petrol and four bullets of gas came in. The next day, on December 30th, a comparable number of tankers once again entered Nepal. And yet the petrol pumps and gas dealers in Nepal say they are out of stock. The only logical explanation, an explanation borne out by anecdotal evidence, is that most of the fuel being imported is sold in black, with complicity of high-ranking government officials. This is why there is no shortage of fuel for big industries which have been ready to pay a high premium. This is why the petrol pumps that are shut down by the day secretly open at night to cater to their well-heeled patrons. This is why all those taxis have enough fuel to run around, with the extra cost of procurement of petrol seamlessly passed on to the helpless passengers.
This slow shift of the Nepali markets—of everything from fuel to vegetables to other daily necessities—into the hands of black-marketers could have a devastating impact on an already battered economy, first by the earthquakes and then by the economic embargo. The prices of commodities like pulses, sugar and salt have in the past three months increased by an average of 50 percent. Even the conservative official inflation rate is now in double digits. With wages and salaries stagnant, the lower- and middle-classes could soon struggle to buy even basic foodstuff to feed their families. This is why it's important for the government to act now: to take a firm stand against black-marketers and check the troubling expansion of the informal economy. A democratic government ought to be a lot more accountable to its people than the Oli government, neck-deep in corruption, has been.
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