Kathmandu, February 2
Today a meeting between the officials of Nepal-India Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NICCI) and North East Development Finance Corporation Ltd (NEDFi) took place at NICCI Secretariat.
The meeting was chaired by NICCI President Shreejana Rana. She welcomed all the members of the NEDFi team and informed briefly about the NICCI - its objectives, past, present and future activities, among others.
Since Rana is from the tourism background, she further informed the Indian team that NICCI has facilitated organising second joint working group (JWG) meeting of Nepal and India on June 6, 2018 where the governments as well as the private stakeholders were present from both the countries and discussed the points on leave travel concession, overland travel issues-air connectivity/road connectivity, joint promotion of tourism between Nepal and India developing religious circuits in both the countries and agreed joint tourism promotion between the two countries.
"Now NICCI has worked on developing a coffee table book on religious circuits for the promotion of tourism between Nepal and India," she said. Rana further informed the Indian team that NICCI has constituted nine different working committees to look after the issues of different sectors and they are working on the related issues, respectively.
Rana further emphasised on the prospects and opportunities and challenges in trade in various sectors between the two countries as Nepal has huge potential in hydropower projects, infrastructure, SMEs-agriculture, tourism, etcetera and the collaboration in such sectors could be beneficial to investors as well as governments of both the countries.
Rajan Sharma, convener of Trade and Transit Committee, highlighted that at present the custodian right of Nepali goods is in the hands of the Indian clearing agents. "This is a big problem as the legal provisions shift the liability to the clearing agent."
The provisions should be to involve the Nepali freight forwarders and hold them liable with agency cooperation between the CHA and Nepali freight forwarders, he opined.
He further said that the electronic cargo tracking system between India and Nepal involves a charge of at least INR 3,400 per container.
"This is too expensive and Nepali importers should not be made to pay such charges for tracking the transit cargo within Indian territory."
Convener of Energy Committee Batu Lamichhane also highlighted the current status of power generation, power trade status between Nepal and India.
He informed that Nepal has surplus energy during the wet season -producing 3,339 MW (in year 2022) of which Nepal has surplus of 1,205 MW and last year during the monsoon season NEA had exported 364 MW to India.
"Nepal has plans and policies to develop more than10,000 MW power by next decade. As India has been fulfilling 50 per cent of power demand through coal base energy, if the power could be supplied through Nepal the coalbased power could be replaced in India. So, there are huge prospects in power sector, and there are big opportunities for the Indian investors to come and invest in hydropower projects in Nepal."
From the Indian side, NEDFi Chairman and Managing Director PVSLN Murty, NEDFi Executive Director SK Baruha, Senior Professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University Prof Mahendra P Lama, Senior Consultant at NEDFi Abhijit Kumar Bezbarua, Manager at NEDFi Abhisek Lama, were present whereas from Nepali side, other NICCI officials included Vice-President Harkirat Singh Bedi, Secretary General Ramesh Sharma, Co-convener of SME Committee Dammar Khanal, Director General of NICCI Keshab Man Singh, Deputy Director of NICCI Marshal Rathour and Consultant of NICCI Luja Mathema.
A version of this article appears in the print on February 3, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
