This should give a big boost to Nepal’s ad industry and its artistes, while promoting its landscape, culture and language

Despite pressure from the private cable operators and Direct-to-Home (DTH) satellite television service providers, the government has shown its resolve not to extend the deadline for implementing Clean Feed. This means, all foreign channels can only beam their programmes in Nepal without advertisements after October 23. On October 24 last year, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari had authenticated the Advertising Regulating Act that gave the private sector a year’s time to make preparations for implementing the Clean Feed Policy. Hence, the government, even if it wills, is unable to move the deadline any further. Currently, more than 200 channels beam into Nepali homes, most of them Indian ones, and nearly all of them carry foreign advertisements.

Although the idea of introducing Clean Feed in foreign channels was mooted a decade back, it was only in 2016 that a policy was drafted. But it couldn’t be implemented for want of a law governing foreign advertisements and channels, which took three years before it could be signed by the President.

The private cable operators have plenty of reasons to be unhappy with the Clean Feed Policy. For one, it’s going to put an extra financial burden on foreign broadcasters and TV operators in Nepal, who will need to add equipment and other resources to filter the ads and pass only the programme content to the Nepali viewers. Hence, their argument that the Nepali viewers will end up paying more for watching a foreign channel. But even as private cable operators sulk, time is fast running out for them with just a week to make the final preparations. On the other hand, Nepal’s advertising agencies are elated. Actually they had been demanding the implementation of Clean Feed as early as January this year, hoping to see an expansion of the domestic advertising market and creation of new jobs. Nepal’s advertisement industry is said to be worth Rs 12 billion, which could see it go up by another Rs 2 billion should the clean feed policy be implemented in earnest.

The Advertisement Regulation Act does more than just clip foreign advertisements from foreign programme content under the Clean Feed Policy. Should any foreign channel want to place an ad in a programme, it will now need to be produced in Nepal using local content, artistes and language. It can no longer be dubbed as in the past. This should give a big boost to Nepal’s advertising industry and its artistes, while promoting the country’s landscape, culture and language. But will multinational and other foreign companies invest in producing ads in the Nepali language? With a population of 30 million people, Nepal is no small market. And given the popularity of Indian channels in Nepal, they are a major source of advertisements for multinational products.

Hence, in all likelihood, we could see foreign companies coming here to make ads that have local colour and flavour. But the Clean Feed Policy comes in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has hit all sectors of the economy, naturally affecting the advertisement industry also. But let us keep our fingers crossed and hope all will turn out well over time.

Come October 24, Nepali viewers can expect a totally new experience.

Give fixed price

Paddy harvesting is in full swing across the country.

But the farmers are not getting the support price for the crop set by the government way back in June when the paddy plantation started. At that time, the government had set the minimum support price of Rs 27.35 per kg for thick-sized paddy and Rs 28.85 per kg for thin-sized paddy. The minimum support price for paddy was set by the government so that farmers would not leave their farm land fallow.

Now the farmers are lamenting that they are not getting the price fixed by the government. They are forced to sell their produce at a much lower price in the local market. It is learnt that rice mills are only paying Rs 22 per kg for both types of paddy. While presenting the budget, the government had promised to set up 78 agriculture retail markets at the local levels. But no initiative has been taken yet. This is a serious issue the government should address without fail. The farmers could plant paddy on time because of the timely arrival of the monsoon which lasted longer than the average period. But paddy production is likely to decrease as the farmers were unable to get fertilisers in time.