But we doubt the success of the underlining objective. Although we do not oppose such a drive in itself, we believe the major constrains in bringing oppressed people into the mainstream economy are lack of a healthy business environment, entrepreneurial skills and market accessibility, not the existing borrowing rate.
This newspaper has said many times that continuing labor union militancy is the major obstacle to industrialization, followed by power shortage. The incident that forced Surya Garment to permanently shut down its entire operations in Nepal and the six-week closure of an Italian restaurant in the capital after workers opposed the management’s right to appoint a manger speak volumes for the unsavory environment for doing business.
So, apart from smoothening financial accessibility for deprived communities, we think that the government should make all out efforts to deal with the militant attitude of workers so as to ensure a more healthy business environment if it is to boost the confidence of those members of oppressed communities who want to start new businesses.
Another important factor that is lacking is organized entrepreneurial skill development training for oppressed groups to help them develop entrepreneurship based on local resources. Our reservation here is, as long as the state machinery does not identify those from backward communities who want to start new businesses and provide them vocational training, how can one feel convinced that only lowering the lending rate will bring the desire results.
More than that, we have numerous examples from the past of how such loans extended to those without any skills tend to end up being misused.
Lack of market access is another stumbling block, for businesses involving locally produced goods. We have heaven-sent climatic conditions for apple faming in the remote areas of Jumla and Mustang districts, but tragically hundreds of tons of apples rot there and we import more than Rs 500 million worth of apples from China and India.
Undoubtedly, we can give new economic opportunities to thousands of oppressed people if we develop access roads to those areas and provide the locals training in modern apple harvesting techniques, along with some concessional loans of course.
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