I woke up early in the morning and saw our honorable Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli addressing a business meeting in India. He talked about the investment prospects and also mentioned that Nepal was a virgin land for any kind of investment. Such inspiring speech may give goose bumps to the Nepali people. But, the ground reality is that we are not yet strong enough and competent, which makes us incompetent in terms of attracting foreign investments. Economic development by modern practices is the necessity our times.

As being a country between two vibrant economies (India & China), we are not able to follow the practices for pushing the Nepal into the path of development. Economic development can be related to the presence of strong banking institutions. Out of the total 753 local levels formed, commercial banks have only reached 374 local levels as of mid-Feb 2018 (As per a report by Nepal Rastra Bank). Higher the number of banks, greater would be the size of funds available for the businessmen and individuals to make their investment and increase production of goods and services. Likewise, the use of debit and credit cards and mobile banking should be encouraged among the people in order to bring all the money in the system. Therefore, the government should develop such infrastructure that will help the banks and other financial institutions to go in every local level.

There are too many political parties in our country. Recently, some of the parties have merged or are in the process of unification. Political transformation is taking place. But we still don’t have a system of voting electronically in election. And people living abroad cannot cast their votes yet. In government offices, we do not get services in time. The bureaucracy is just difficult to deal with. Use of online payment platforms such as e-Sewa and Khalti has been limited to clearing bills of electricity and telephone.

The legal, economical and political hassles need to be addressed and replaced by digitalizing the services provided to the people across the country. Internal system should be strengthened. Transparency should be ensured in all public and private institutions by the government. In that way, Nepal will be able to not only graduate from least developed to developing country by 2022 but also become lower-middle income country by 2030.

The author is currently a Junior Officer at Machhapuchchhre Bank Limited. He holds MBA degree from Pokhara University.