Kathmandu, March 19

As the country is set to host the Nepal Investment Summit with much fanfare on March 29 and 30 in a bid to promote Nepal as a promising investment destination, experts have said that the event should primarily focus on assessing the needs of investors over merely showcasing project ideas and policy frameworks.

Experts have stated that if such summits are organised after assessing the needs of investors and the projects they seek then such summits will have a bigger impact rather than just calling on investors to compromise with the available policies and projects with the country.

“Studying investors’ requirements prior to developing projects and formulating policies are crucial to bring in investors. Though we have formulated a number of investment-related policies in recent times and cited that they have lucrative provisions for investors, we do not know whether or not our available legal provisions match the demand of investors,” said Radesh Pant, former chief executive officer of Investment Board Nepal (IBN).

According to him, the government should focus on matching the needs of investors and the country’s policies and available projects at the summit rather than just showcasing available project ideas and policy reforms. “Investors look for properly studied and feasible projects along with other practical issues related to land acquisition, environmental issues and equity provisions in a project,” he said.

“The government should be able to ensure that potential investors at the summit get complete information on projects being showcased and assurance that the environmental and land issues are properly facilitated,” Pant added.

IBN has finalised 63 projects covering different sectors to be showcased at the summit. However, IBN has only carried out the pre-feasibility study (base study) of a majority of these projects and will be providing only basic information of these projects that includes the estimated cost, opportunities of the project and challenges, among others to potential investors at the summit.

Economic expert Biswo Poudel, opined that the government has not been able to promote that Nepal is ‘hungry’ for investment and various cases related to ‘Ncell’ and ‘Amul’ in the recent months have raised questions regarding favourable investment climate in Nepal lately. Though investment summits like these are necessary, the country seems to have failed to address different issues like making policies clear and bringing down the doing business cost in Nepal, which is crucial to encourage investors, as per Poudel.

“The government should first take note of what the foreign investors seek before investing in a country through embassies and other bilateral means and then address them through policies,” he mentioned.

Meanwhile, the country’s private sector believes that the government should first work on bringing down the doing business cost in the country, which is one of the highest in South Asia, to lure investors.

“Any investor looks for profit in a country before deciding to invest and profit is directly related to the doing business cost. The government’s clear intention to promote investment and promulgation of necessary laws is laudable. However, in the end investors look for low doing business cost and the government should work on it by ensuring necessary infrastructure and favourable labour laws, among others,” said Shekhar Golchha, senior vice-president of Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

However, the government is pretty confident that the investment summit will help promote Nepal as a virgin land for investment. Instead of looking for investment pledges through the summit, the government believes that the event is an opportunity for the country to showcase potential areas of investment, projects that have been identified, laws that have been enacted to attract investment, and processes that have been developed to support investors.