The request offer will be made at the Eighth Meeting of Expert Group on SAARC Agreement on Trade in Service, which will begin on Tuesday in Kathmandu.[break]
“We are still to finalize the list of service sectors that we want SAARC member countries to open up for Nepalese investors. However, we are likely to offer service sectors that are included in NTIS,” said a source at the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies (MoCS) on Monday.
NTIS has suggested 19 priority export potentials for Nepal that includes 12 goods and seven service areas. Services identified by NTIS are tourism, labor, health, education, IT & Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), engineering and hydro-electricity.
Even if member countries open up their markets, Nepali investors are not in a position to immediately invest in foreign countries because the existing Nepali laws restrict investment by Nepal citizens in foreign countries in both goods and services.
The source said Nepali delegation that will be led by Toya Narayan Gyawali, joint-secretary at the MoCS, at the two-day meeting is unlikely to propose specific service sectors in Nepal for foreign investment. “Without assessing the possible impacts on Nepalese economy, we will not make offer to member countries to invest in Nepal in certain services,” the source said.
The 16th SAARC summit held in Bhutan in 2010 had decided to introduce the service sector in the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA), which would incorporate only goods for regional preferential trade by then.
SAARC members have already made their initial offer to open over 170 sub-sectors of service for foreign investments in line with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
“Nepal has already agreed to open up 70 sub-sectors of services for other member countries as per the WTO rules. We will decide on the additional sub-sectors of service for foreign investors after assessing its impact on the Nepal´s economy,” said the source.
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