HELLO NEPAL

The Himalayan Times 21 July 2022 People’s frustration Political changes in some parts of the globe are disturbing and worrisome, considering the social and economic impacts being faced by the common people. The visual effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and bad governance are among other factors destabilizing nation, resulting in the collapse of the government. Growing dissatisfaction among the people towards the performance of their governments, who failed to address their hardships, could be disastrous for the democratically-elected government. That was what happened in Sri Lanka where the highly influential leaders, who were democratically elected and responsible for running the government, undermined the accumulated frustration of the common people over the last one decade, resulting in thousands of people coming out to the streets to express their frustration.   Crises like these do not just happen overnight, they are the result of decades of mal-governance by leaders who n

  The Himalayan Times 14 July 2022 Missed opportunity One might be surprised to know about the government’s capital spending capacity dramatically increases towards the end of any fiscal year. All the government ministries, departments and their subordinate offices become very active in spending their annual budget allocated for the development projects with the approach of the end of the fiscal year. We see this trend continuing every fiscal year despite the Auditor General Office’s (ADG) repetitive objection while auditing their annual operations. However, the government and its bodies have failed to abide by this financial rule and continue to disburse the budget haphazardly in the last month and week of the financial year. In accordance with the Financial Comptroller General Office (FCGO), the government had spent Rs 1.238 trillion (75.81 %), out of the total allocated budget of Rs 1.633 trillion, for this fiscal year. As per the existing financial rules, the capital budge

  The Himalayan Times 7 July 2022 NOC :state owned sinking entity It is not surprising to hear that the Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has again raised the prices of petroleum products effective Monday midnight citing losses of billions of rupees due to lack of price adjustment as per the price hike in the international market “NOC hikes price of petroleum products” (THT, July 5, Page 1). It buys petroleum products from India and claims that it has incurred a loss of Rs47 billion in the last 10 months, and this is expected to reach Rs60 billion in the next month. If it fails to clear its outstanding dues within the next month, which does not seem possible by any means, the supply of petroleum products to Nepal might come to a halt or reduced to a meagre volume. NOC management must have developed a market selling pricing system after topping-up its operational costs plus taxes to be paid to the government for different purposes and commissions to be paid to the petroleum dealers. B

The Himalayan Times 1 July 2022 No more political parties Nepal and its people continue to suffer miserably in many aspects, including the current sky rocketing market prices of consumable foodstuffs and goods due to irresponsible, insensible and unaccountable government. All political parties, who had formed the government and run the nation in the past, also failed to prove their capabilities to lead the nation towards prosperity. Even the two-thirds majority government of the then NCP could not survive its full five-year term owing to its internal political feud. It seems now that the country is gradually losing its sovereignty due to seen and unseen political interference of external powers, owing to the unprincipled and indecisive political behavior of the senior leaders of the major political parties. I have nothing to do with any political parties. Being a staunch supporter and believer in constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy, considering the historical, t