KATHMANDU, Sept 18: Nepali handicraft is one of the most exported products of the country. The handicrafts carry a touch of the country’s history and art and are exported across the world. The global handicraft market value was worth Rs 84 trillion in 2020.

REUTERS, Sept 15: A month after seizing Kabul, the Taliban face daunting problems as they seek to convert their lightning military victory into a durable peacetime government.

KATHMANDU, September 3: Preparations are currently underway to reopen the Pashupatinath Temple around the Teej festival. According to Rewati Raman Adhikari, Administrative Officer of the Pashupatinath Area Development Trust (PADT), the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation and the District Administrative Office of Kathmandu have been consulted to reopen the temple around the Teej festival.

KATHMANDU, August 25: Terhathum Power Company is issuing its Initial Public Offering (IPO) from today. According to the company, the IPO offering will remain open till August 29 and will be extended till September 4 if it is not fully sold.

KATHMANDU, August 21: The most important question has never been raised: Can an open economy like Nepal pursue an independent monetary policy and inflation rate by maintaining a stable exchange rate with its major trading partners? My answer is a ‘no’.  Unfortunately, policymakers never know, despite comments in the past from many organizations and individuals.

In Nepal, the minimum wage was introduced in the fiscal year 2007/08. Between 2007/08 and 2018/19, our economic growth has remained at an average of 4.59 percent while the minimum wage over the last decade has increased by 400 per cent. The gap between productivity and minimum wage seems to be ever-widening. The government is more focused on increasing access to the share of the shrinking economic pie instead of expanding the whole pie.

KATHMANDU, August 10: Finance Minister Janardan Sharma has claimed that the whitepaper issued by the government on Tuesday is not biased and that it reflects the country’s economic realities at present.

Apart from the environment-based argument and identification of the perceived rent-seeking political economic incentive behind the new budgetary policy raised by various media outlets, there are least spoken but vital arguments that either challenge the premise behind the proposed policy or observe likely chances of the policy to encroach upon sub-national jurisdiction in the governing transactions of sand, gravel, and stones.

Our economy has created countless possibilities to earn wealth, but we have always known that money must be created from something real. However, this does not apply to cryptocurrencies since billions of dollars are being created through a virtual process known as ‘mining’.

Pseudo-experts have great influence in public policy management. As a result Nepal’s policies are becoming less robust. Policies are formulated without adequate scientific analysis. Although there has been continuous progress, our policy documents fall far behind those of other SAARC nations in terms of prior analysis.

KATHMANDU, May 21: Industries have been affected largely by a heavy fall in market demand during the second wave of COVID-19 and the government has enforced prohibitory orders despite many of them being in cushions to run their businesses compared to the impacts of the pandemic last year.

With equity markets reaching new heights at a time of rising income and wealth inequality, it should be obvious that today's market mania will end in tears, reproducing the economic injustices of the 2008 crash.

SEOUL, March 4: South Korea’s central bank says the country’s economy shrank for the first time in 22 years in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic destroyed service industry jobs and depressed consumer spending.

State’s rightward shift poses a risk of pushing us into the abyss of status-quo and, more worryingly, regression.

How will corrupt system of political governance, devoid of meritocracy and efficiency, deliver public service in honesty and free us from anarchy of political cartel?

Given China’s desire to be a respected member of the international community, a more satisfactory US approach would involve seeking cooperation and mutual gain when possible and limiting confrontation to vital issues.

With the snapback for durables likely to be finished soon, even rapid vaccination is unlikely to shorten the tough time that lies ahead for the post-pandemic US economy.

WILMINGTON, Del. Jan 15: Saying the nation faces “a crisis of deep human suffering,” President-elect Joe Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan Thursday to turn the tide on the pandemic, speeding up vaccines and pumping out financial help to those struggling with the prolonged economic fallout.

National and global leaders are desperate to return to the pre-pandemic status quo. But that is not good enough, because harder blows are coming.

This is the best of times and the worst of times. As financial markets celebrate the coming vaccine-led boom, the confluence of epidemiological and political aftershocks has pushed us back into a quagmire of heightened economic vulnerability.

It is almost impossible to comprehend how much damage Donald Trump’s presidency has done to America’s global standing these past four years.

KATHMANDU, Nov 4: Helambu, a popular tourist destination, will be developed into an apple hub.

Just as China led the world in economic recovery in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, it is playing a similar role today. Its post-COVID rebound is gathering momentum amid a developed world that remains on shaky ground.

China and the US will use multilateralism, formal and informal, to protect the system within which they have flourished and to solidify the alliances with which they intend to chart their future course.

Joe Biden has a better chance than anyone of rebuilding the Democratic coalition and winning back the support of disaffected, working-class voters.

If the rest of the world wants to cooperate on developing green products and services, China will oblige. If it doesn’t, China will rely on its own formidable strengths to sustain its growth and development.

What do you consider a normal situation for our country? Were we ever normal as a country?

It is sad that despite all the political upheavals and fiery speeches delivered to the public, no serious case has been made to trim the size of parliament and the government.

KATHMANDU, Sept 22: Dhan Bahadur Shah of Kailali had opened an eatery in Kalanki area. But, less than two months after he started the business, the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to close the place in March.

NEW YORK – The recent sharp depreciation of the US dollar has led to concerns that it may lose its role as the main global reserve currency. After all, in addition to the US Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary easing—which threatens to debase the world’s key fiat currency even further—gold prices and inflation expectations have also been rising.

In an email interview with Republica, Faris Hadad-Zervos, World Bank Country Director for the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, explains the framework along with other issues like the World Bank’s support to Nepal and how the government should manage its resources during this crisis:

WASHINGTON, DC – The US federal debt-to-GDP ratio rose sharply during the 2008-09 Great Recession and continued rising thereafter, going from 62 percent in 2007 to 90 percent in 2010. By 2019, it had reached 106 percent, and the Congressional Budget Office was warning that the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare would be exhausted by 2028. Many economists argued that a debt-to-GDP ratio of 100 percent was already worryingly high, and that the future tax increases needed to reduce it would be massive.

KATHMANDU, Aug 13: As COVID 19 crisis is grappling the world economy, signs of recession are also seen here in Nepal. Major shopping hubs in Kathmandu- New Road and old market of Ason have witnessed crisis owing to adverse impact on business.

KATHMANDU, Aug 8: The earnings of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) saw a sharp decline of 43 percent in the last fiscal year 2019/20.

BEIJING, July 16: China became the first major economy to grow since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, recording an unexpectedly strong 3.2% expansion in the latest quarter after anti-virus lockdowns were lifted and factories and stores reopened.

BEIJING, July 13: China’s economy is showing steady recovery, but a hard battle still lies ahead as the situation remains severe both at home and abroad, state radio quoted Premier Li Keqiang as saying on Monday.

LONDON – Since March, I have been more open than other commentators to the possibility of a “V-shaped” recovery from the pandemic-induced downturn (though I have also consistently warned of structural challenges facing many economies in the decade ahead). Wherever I have expressed this optimism, I have met with pushback, given the apparent depth and scale of the current crisis. And yet, as we move into July, many classic short-term leading and coincident indicators still point to a V-shaped recovery, as does the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane.

KATHMANDU, June 30: Nepali housewife Shiba Kala Limbu grimaced as she recalled how she went hungry in order to feed her five-year-old daughter after the coronavirus pandemic cost her husband his job as a mason in the Gulf state of Qatar.

KATHMANDU, June 29: Security experts have expressed fears that the prolonged lockdown and restriction measures put in place to contain COVID-19 without any support to ease the life of ordinary people could soon push the country toward a state of social unrest.

More than 200 businesses have already left Thamel

BRISBANE/NEW YORK – Back in 2013, the Chinese government laid out a policy agenda that promised real reforms to an economy laden with debt and distorted by the influence of the country’s large state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector. But instead of seeing that agenda through, China chose to dodge the risks entailed by marketization, and has since reverted to what it knows best: state control over the economy and the semblance of stability that comes with it.

With the COVID-19 pandemic bringing to a halt economic and broader development activity around the world, the World Bank has projected that remittances to low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) will fall sharply in 2020—by about 20 percent. Nepal, where remittance contribution to GDP in 2019 was equivalent to 27.3 percent according to the World Bank, has lost nearly 50 percent of remittances in past two months compared to the same period last year according to the Nepal Rashtra Bank, the country’s central bank’s report published in May 2020.

KATHMANDU, June 2: The government is planning to create jobs through irrigation projects for migrant workers who will return home because of COVID-19.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China, experts have speculated what its long-term effects on global health, the global economy, and social welfare will be. The human lives lost to the pandemic have been colossal. The economic impact of COVID-19 paints a very dreary picture: rising unemployment, crashing oil prices, and increasing risk of recession, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicting that the global economy will shrink by three percent in 2020. Bloomberg Economics’ analysis predicts that, in the worst case, COVID-19 could cost the global economy $2.7 trillion in global output, recessions in the US, Euro-area, and Japan, and the slowest growth on record in China.

KATHMANDU, May 27: The government unveiled the Economic Survey of the current fiscal year 2019/20 on Tuesday, its assessment of the performance of the country's various economic and financial indicators. But, reading this report in the end of May will take you back to mid-March, and gives you a false sense that the country's economy has been doing fairly well.

With the Covid-19 pandemic bringing the economy to a standstill, many businesses are in immediate need for financial support. The finance committee of the Parliament has recommended the government include a NPR 188 billion financial package in FY2021 budget to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy. The need is urgent, but the economy is in a tight squeeze and a fiscal stimulus may be easier said than done.

WASHINGTON, DC – COVID-19 has confronted the world with a horrific crisis. Because developing a vaccine will likely take at least a year, governments need to buy time to keep health-care facilities from being overwhelmed and to minimize the number of people who fall ill and die, not least by reducing the rate of new infections.

KATHMANDU, May 20: The government has been reluctant to come up with a stimulus package as demanded by the private sector leaders to help the economy regain its footing.

As the COVID-19 pandemic begins to form our ideas of a new normal, a daily topic of discussion in most households revolves around speculating about the shape and future of the economy. Theories are rife and forecasting models are being created and shattered on a daily basis, but the fact remains that the world has never witnessed such an unprecedented economic upheaval and therefore there is no accurate way of predicting how the world economies will evolve post-COVID-19.

Recession fears were hovering even before the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis. There were lots of predictions about the global recession in 2020. Widespread trade tensions among countries, Brexit uncertainty and slow growth in Eurozone, Asian market slowdown, erratic commodities price were some of the reasons for a global recession in 2020. The argument for and against it was there on its highest altitude. However, once the coronavirus appeared as an unwanted guest, the global economy slid into gloomy states, and the recession ensued.