Nepal unveils projects worth $30 billion in forum

Kathmandu, March 29 (IANS) Nepal on Friday unveiled dozens of private and public projects worth $30 billion at the start of a two-day investment forum.

The government is looking to boost growth in the Himalayan country, which is classified by the UN as one of the world's 48 least developed countries, reports Efe news.

"We need to attain a double-digit growth over the next years. A tentative estimation (...) is that the country would require an investment of over 97.77 trillion Nepali rupees (about $88.18 billion) over the next five years," Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli said at the Nepal Investment Summit 2019's inauguration here.

"Domestic resources alone would not be sufficient to meet this requirement," he added.

More than 600 investors and high-level officials from multinational companies and organisations from 40 countries were expected to take part in the Nepal Investment Summit 2019.

More than half were expected to be from India and China.

Nepal is also often severely affected by natural disasters and is still recovering from the 2015 earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people.

According to Systematic Country Diagnostic report of the World Bank, Nepal's growth has been much lower than that of the other economies in the region during the last 20 years, growing at an average rate of 4 per cent annually.

To address this, the government has begun looking outward to stimulate its economy following years of instability.

"We all know the investment climate was not favourable in past years due to the unstable political situation, labour issues and the energy deficit," said Bhawani Rana, President of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

"Now, the situation has improved. We have a powerful and stable government to deliver optimistic results," added Rana.

She said that the summit would be a platform to demonstrate to the international community that Nepal is open for business.