Kathmandu, June 28

Makawanpur based business people have rated the situation of ‘doing ethical business’ as being moderate in the central region. Business people of the district said so today during a regional workshop held in Hetauda, aiming to identify challenges of doing business and

ways of promoting ethical business culture.

Transparency International (TI) Nepal and Makawanpur Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) had jointly organised the workshop as a part of the project called ‘Promoting Ethical Culture’ in which Ncell is providing support as part of its corporate social responsibility. During the programme participants discussed on the hassles being faced regarding policies and procedures that challenge business ethics. They also spoke on how local chambers and individual businesses could address those challenges to promote ethical culture.

Participants stressed on the need to improve the behaviour of the business community itself. “The desire among certain business people to earn money overnight and lack of clear processes, policies and discretionary authority provisioned to government officials have been mainly affecting ethical business environment,” said Raj Kumar Neupane, president of MCCI.

Chamber representatives said that doing business in an ethical manner was becoming more difficult because authorities place undue demands. Though a majority of the challenges call for strong political commitment and broader reforms, they believed concerned authorities can still address issues like ambiguous processes and policies with relative ease.

Participants also suggested district chambers in the region to enact a code of conduct, reward and punish member firms based on their practices, and push for reforms to improve business environment. During the programme, Ambar Bahadur Thapa, legal director of Ncell, stated that corruption was a serious problem and the corporate sector had a responsibility in dealing with it.

“We, at Ncell, are committed to shunning corruption in all its manifestations and have signed Integrity Pledge in the presence of TI Nepal to follow ethical norms and undertake measures that are conducive to good corporate governance,” said Thapa.