Nepal Weekly

Nepal Weekly - 2026-06-10

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:26:48 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Delhi This Week, Beijing Next

Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal finished a three days adventure in New Delhi on Sunday with three deliverables. He was able to stitch-together a live UPI-to-Nepal cross-border payments link, the handover of 72 health facilities and 12 cultural heritage sites rebuilt after the 2015 earthquake, and an MoU between India's Digital India Bhashini and Kathmandu University to build a voice-first AI platform for Nepali. Khanal also met National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and pitched a five-part partnership in energy, connectivity, digital integration, education, and technology, including a tripartite green-energy grid with India and Bangladesh and proposed IIT or AIIMS campuses in Nepal. On the border dispute, Khanal confirmed that teams are working along the 1,800+ km boundary and said Nepal wants historical documents from British archives for reference, not mediation. The new RSP government is pitching evidence-based, non-ideological diplomacy loudly enough that New Delhi is listening, and Jaishankar says it’s a chance to "shift the trajectory" of ties. Khanal leaves for Beijing on June 14, and has meetings scheduled with Wang Yi and CCP International Department head Liu Haixing on June 15 and 16.

Read more: Times of India (Jaishankar), The Kathmandu Post (five-pillar proposals), Stratnewsglobal (Kalapani reaffirmed), The Kathmandu Post (NCHL-NPCI mechanism), Opengovasia (Bhashini MoU signatories)

Hundi's Days Are Numbered

Nepal Clearing House and India's NPCI went live with a real-time, fully digital cross-border transfer link on June 9, connecting Nepal's NPI directly to India's UPI. Migrant workers on both sides of the border will now be able to move money through mobile banking without ever having to see a remittance agent. The limits are (hilariously?) lopsided, though - transfers from India into Nepal can be up to INR 200,000 (about $2,400) with no monthly cap, but the Nepal-to-India direction is limited to INR 15,000 (about $180) per transaction and INR 100,000 (about $1,200) monthly. At INR 150 per transfer, the fee is modest when compared to the $1.5 to $2 billion in annual cross-border flows that still move through a mix of formal channels and cash hand-carried over the border.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Reopening the Palace Massacre File

Sudhan Gurung's first act back at the Home Ministry was to reopen the Narayanhiti royal massacre file, the 2001 palace killing of King Birendra and members of the royal family that’s never really resulted in a convincing official account. Gurung, an RSP MP from Gorkha-1 who resigned the same post earlier, was sworn in Tuesday by President Paudel alongside Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Mahabir Pun. Beyond the palace case, Gurung announced a task force to review whether criminal charges against Gen-Z protest participants from last Bhadra should be dropped, and a special unit to stop “sensitive” information leaking out of the ministry. Pun, an independent MP from Myagdi and a longtime advocate for a standalone science ministry, arrived at his new post promising to wrap up his agenda within three years.

Read more: Himalaya Times (ceremony attendees), Khabarhub (four decisions), Khabarhub (Pun)

EC Wants a Smaller Parliament

The Election Commission has proposed cutting the House of Representatives from 275 to 105 seats, and shrinking the National Assembly from 59 to 30 members, in addition to (perhaps most surprisingly) trimming its own ranks from five commissioners to three. On the other hand, however, it also wants the constitution to give it sole authority over setting election dates, a power it now shares with the government. The slimmed-down lower house would seat 77 first-past-the-post members and 28 by way of proportional representation (one constituency per district), while proportional representation in provincial assemblies would be done away with altogether. Officiating Chief Election Commissioner Ram Prasad Bhandari says the goal is a "lean and agile" institution.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Take the Money and Run

Of Rs 770 million ($5.1 million) in subsidised loans given to 765 startups over the past two fiscal years, only Rs 28.2 million ($186,000) has been returned, for a repayment rate under 4 percent. The scheme, introduced by the Oli government in 2018 in support of more self-employment, was dormant for five years because of “procedural delays.” This year's disbursement is running late after political reshuffling and a vacancy at the top of the Industrial Enterprise Development Institute, which is still trying to work through a list of about 750 final recipients from 1,301 shortlisted applicants out of 10,244 who applied. Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle has an idea for a new support vehicle, the Nepal Enterprise Facility, which would bring startup and SME businesses onto a single platform. Loans go through Rastriya Banijya Bank at 3 percent apr, up to Rs 2 million ($13,200) apiece.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Reasons to Leak a Budget

Armed Police intercepted 775 unregistered Chinese EVs on the Mustang-Kaski corridor in raids Wednesday and into Thursday, after a tip that customs officials, clearing agents, and traders had been working together to rush vehicles through the Korala border crossing before the 2026-27 budget's higher EV tariffs came into force. Not one of the seized vehicles had a license plate. The government has been pushing EV adoption, though, and a Ministry of Infrastructure Development report this week found Nepal needs 10,000 charging stations by 2030 to reach its 90 percent private EV target. That compares to the about 1,000 stations that can be found today, most of them clustered in Kathmandu, Pokhara, and Bharatpur.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (seizure operation), myRepublica (charging infrastructure)

Fifteen Days Was Always a Lie

1,488 (Ed: that’s an oddly specific number) people from 388 households are still parked in seven government holding centres across Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Kavrepalanchok, 39 days after evictions that came with a (written!) promise of permanent housing within 10 to 15 days. The six-point notice issued April 24 has become “inoperative.” Chief District Officer Eshwor Raj Poudel declined to comment, saying the process is under review. In Parliament on May 31, the PM gave a different perspective when he said "It will take as long as it takes. We cannot rush it."

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Congress Can't Find Its Members

Nepali Congress launched a digital membership renewal drive on April 14 to clean up its records ahead of the 15th General Convention. It cleaned up more than expected. The party had roughly 850,000 active members as it went into its 14th convention; officials now admit the updated database will end up having about half that number. Some of the gap is ordinary attrition (like members who emigrated, or went to the Rastriya Swatantra Party), but some of the change is more… political. Cadres aligned with Shekhar Koirala and Purna Bahadur Khadka are refusing to renew until Gagan Thapa, who ruan a special convention at the end of 2025, wins back their confidence. "I have not updated my membership because I want the leadership to feel pressure," for example, said one Jhapa leader.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (vote-member gap), The Kathmandu Post (decade-long morale)

Uber Rolls In

Uber arrived on Friday as the fourth international ride-hailing platform in Nepal, drawing about 2,500 driver registrations within a week and getting more than 20,000 app installs. Regional VP Dominic Taylor mentioned the company had been looking at Nepal a decade ago before putting the idea on ice, but apparently the youth-led government and pending ride-sharing legislation has changed the math. The Uber success story in Nepal will lean heavily on tourist traffic from markets where Uber is already operating.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (Uber partnership model)

Two Flags Battle for a Single Generation

The US and Chinese embassies opened applications for rival youth leadership programmes within weeks of each other, each trying to draw members from the generation that toppled the Oli government last September at a cost of 76 lives. The American version has been running since 2014 and claims 700 alumni across Nepal; China's brand-new "Youth Pioneer Program" is dangling an all-expense-paid trip to Beijing for top performers. Oh la la.

Nepal Weekly - 2026-06-03

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 05:48:15 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by UC Berkeley, Department of Geography on Unsplash

Subscribe now

Big Numbers and Small Print

Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle put forward a budget of almost $14 billion on May 29. That’s the biggest ever in Nepal's history and about a quarter fatter than this year's revised spending. The $4.3 billion deficit will be covered with foreign loans and domestic borrowing. Some of the headline relief is real. The income tax exemption threshold doubles to Rs 1 million ($6,600) a year, and the top marginal rate is going down 10 percentage points. The catch is in the EV section, where Wagle scrapped the old motor peak-power tax and replaced it with a Clean Infrastructure Investment Fee based on customs value - 2.5 percent on cheaper models, 130 percent on anything above Rs 5 million ($33,000). Dealers say entry-level electric cars are going to cost about Rs 100,000 ($660) more as a result. High-end models could go up by more than Rs 10 million ($66,000). NEPSE greeted the package with a 26-point drop on June 1, as 233 companies fell against 35 gainers. Civil servants did well. Their pay will rise by Rs 75 billion ($493 million) to Rs 242 billion ($1.6 billion) - a 21 percent increase that will eat a larger share of a recurrent spending bill that’s already taking up 60 percent of total outlays.

Read more: Nepal News (budget allocation breakdown), myRepublica (EV tax rates), The Kathmandu Post (industry dissent), myRepublica (income tax slabs), myRepublica (NEPSE trading)

Balen Drags Britain Into Border Row

Speaking off the cuff in his first parliamentary Q&A on May 31, PM Balendra Shah said something no Nepali head of government had said before - that Nepal has also encroached on Indian territory in several places. The encroachment line lit the fuse, but Shah had already pulled a second pin by saying that Kathmandu had raised the Kalapani-Lipulekh-Limpiyadhura dispute not only with India and China, but also with London, on the logic that Britain drew the lines when it left in 1816 and should help fix them. India's MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal shut that door quickly, saying there was "no role for any third party." British Ambassador Rob Fenn had told Shah's chief adviser, Kumar Byanjankar, much the same thing, though we presume in a more diplomatic fashion. The Foreign Ministry spent the rest of the week saying Shah had only meant cross-border cultivation in the Dasgaja no-man's-land - a clarification the opposition said is a cover-up.

Read more: Ratopati (India's bilateral stance), The Hindu (parliament uproar), Thewire IN (UK mediation request), Theprint IN (China involvement call), Desh Sanchar (UML resignation demand)

Rights Body Names Oli, Fingers Lamichhane

Nepal's National Human Rights Commission has recommended criminal charges and a five-year political ban against former PM K.P. Sharma Oli, ex-Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak, and ex-Communications Minister Prithvi Subba Gurung over the September 2025 crackdown that killed at least 76 protesters. The report, given to the government Wednesday, doesn’t leave the current ruling coalition unscathed. It recommends investigating 17 RSP lawmakers, including party chair Rabi Lamichhane, who allegedly used a violent mob to pressure a jail administrator into releasing him during the chaos. The commission also gave a formal warning to the Nepali Army for failing to protect parliament and the president's residence. It also cleared current PM Balendra Shah - then Kathmandu's mayor - of complicity. The government has three months to report back on what it plans to do.

Mayor-Turned-PM Gives Himself 48 Jobs

PM Balendra Shah's cabinet restructuring collapsed 22 ministries into 18 and gave his own office 48 separate responsibilities - national security, anti-corruption coordination, and oversight of the National Investigation Department among them (the NID previously sat under Home). Cybersecurity, data governance, and AI policy are on the PMO’s docket too, along with IT functions pulled from the Communications Ministry. The power consolidation further extends into the civil service. On May 13, MoFAGA gave a directive that threatens dismissal of civil servants for party involvement, and a revised Federal Civil Service Bill now circulating would force one-time mandatory retirement for anyone who is 55 years old or who has 30 years of service under his belt when the law comes into effect.

Read more: Spotlight Nepal (ministry task counts), myRepublica (civil servant gag order), The Kathmandu Post (forced retirement)

Washington's Charm Offensive Meets Kathmandu's Local-Ownership Rule

Sarah B. Rogers, the third senior US official to visit since the Shah government took office in March, got to Kathmandu on Saturday night talking up the $550 million MCC Compact and addressing the 1,400-strong Ascent Summit on adventure tourism and tech. Assistant Secretary Paul Kapur came in April, Trump envoy Sergio Gor followed ten days later, and Deputy Secretary Allison Hooker called Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal by phone last Thursday. The PM met none of them. Starlink's director Rebecca Hunter was also in town, telling Communications Minister Bikram Timilsina that the license needed to be 100 percent Starlink-owned. The minister said she hopes to follow Nepali law.

Read more: Spotlight Nepal (Rogers MCC emphasis), Spotlight Nepal (Timilsina), The Kathmandu Post (visit timeline), The Kathmandu Post (Starlink ownership block)

Big Budgets Hampered by Empty Wallets

With 45 days left in the fiscal year, the government has spent nearly two-thirds of its Rs 1.964 trillion ($12.9 billion) budget and capital spending is where the spending really shows up. Only Rs 123 billion ($810 million) of the Rs 407 billion ($2.7 billion) development money set aside has so far gone out the door, a 30% execution rate. That is not a bad year; it is the decade. Finance Ministry figures show budgets averaged 33.7% of GDP over ten years while spending averaged only 26.8%, and growth slowed to 4.1% a year in the five years after Covid even as annual budgets grew at 12.3%. A World Bank report from last year found the government's capital stock has shrunk, meaning the productive base of the economy is getting smaller.

Read more: myRepublica (current spending breakdown), The Kathmandu Post (decade GDP gap)

Schools, Hospitals and Hot Plates Get the Bill

The Economic Bill 2083 adds a 3% "equity fee" to charges at private schools, colleges, and hospitals, with the revenue to be set aside for public education and health infrastructure. Households that are already paying out-of-pocket for both sectors are now going to pay more so the government can, in theory, improve the alternatives they opted out of. The bill also adds a 5% VAT on electricity consumption above 50 units a month - a change that former NEA chief Kulman Ghising says goes against global practice and Nepal's clean-energy goals. He says the grid now runs substations with more than 14,000 MVA of capacity and distribution transformers above 5,000 MVA, and that the VAT revenue will flow to the treasury rather than back into NEA infrastructure.

Read more: myRepublica (equity fee mechanics), myRepublica (Ghising dissent)

100% Gender-Responsive 0% Checked

For three straight fiscal years - 2022-23 through 2024-25 - Nepal's Ministry of Women classified its entire budget as "directly gender responsive." That wasn’t because anyone assessed the programs, but because an IT operator picks "direct" from a dropdown when entering budget headings (“try this one simple trick to… ”). There are apparently no indicators, no scoring, and no analysis. Between 44 and 59 percent of that perfectly-classified budget went unspent each year, heading back to the treasury.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Beijing Sets Quota While Kailash Sets Demand

China has capped Indian pilgrims to Mount Kailash by way of Nepal at 24,000 this season, a small increase over the 20,000 approved last year, but demand has already risen above 40,000 and tour operators have asked Beijing for another 15,000 slots. The Year of the Horse is to credit for the boom. Tibetan tradition holds that one circuit around Kailash in a Horse Year earns the spiritual merit of 12 or 13 in an ordinary one. Beijing sounds "positive" on expanding the quota, according to Basu Adhikari of Touch Kailash Travel. Foreign passport holders could result in another 5,000 pilgrims this season. The overflow is reshaping Humla, where the Hilsa route now supports seven hotels at the border and fifteen in Simkot, as well as a growing market for local apples, walnuts, and buckwheat.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Shenzhen Gets a Direct Line to Kathmandu

Himalaya Airlines launches a Kathmandu-Shenzhen route tomorrow, becoming the first carrier to fly direct between Tribhuvan International and the southern Chinese city that’s home to Huawei, DJI, and China's original Special Economic Zone. Twice-weekly service will run Tuesdays and Thursdays out of Kathmandu.

Read more: Spotlight Nepal (VP Shrestha), The Himalayan Times (buying channels)

Dial-Up Divestment

The FY2026-27 budget will result in a reduction of state ownership of Nepal Telecom from 91 percent to 66 percent. The freed-up shares will be offered to the public by mid-January. The proceeds are expected to be used to fund ambitions to become a "tech hub.” The proposed sale would be the largest state divestment in recent memory.

Nepal Weekly - 2026-05-27

Wed, 27 May 2026 03:28:06 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Sebastian Pena Lambarri on Unsplash

Subscribe now

One House, Two-Thirds, No Senate

The House of Representatives Rules Drafting Committee has tucked a constitutional workaround into Rule 140(11) of the proposed House regulations. The provision would allow for a constitutional amendment to pass on a combined two-thirds vote across both chambers, 223 out of 334 total seats, instead of the separate two-thirds majority each house must independently clear under the constitution as written now. The ruling Rastriya Swatantra Party holds 182 of the lower house's 275 seats on its own, a short walk to the combined threshold. A parliamentary secretariat official said the arrangement "could create controversy." Opposition members on the drafting committee say RSP applied direct pressure to get the provision on paper. Under the constitution, if the National Assembly refuses a constitutional amendment, it dies right there; Rule 140(11) would let a lower house supermajority paper over that refusal by pooling tallies.

Read more: Constitutionnet (expert opposition), myRepublica (RSP seat math)

Balen Skips Question Hour

Rule 56 of the House of Representatives Regulations isn’t complicated. The Speaker is required to set aside an hour in the first week of every month for lawmakers to grill the prime minister directly, but PM Balen Shah has yet to show up. The opposition, a rare unified front of Nepali Congress, CPN-UML, Nepali Communist Party, and Rastriya Prajatantra Party is up in arms. RSP Chief Whip Kabindra Burlakoti told the House Shah would appear "within a week," but the Prime Minister's secretariat refused to let anyone announce a specific date. Nepali Congress lawmaker Arjun Narsingh KC told Parliament his prime minister resembled "the emperor of some separate island."

Read more: Nepal News (Shah declined attendance), Khabarhub (Burlakoti commitment), The Kathmandu Post (Speaker's Singh Durbar visit), Ratopati (Rule 56 sub-rule), The Himalayan Times (bills passed anyway)

Wrong Court, Your Honour

The Supreme Court on blocked the arrest of former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife Arzu Rana Deuba on money laundering charges Monday, ruling that the Kathmandu District Court had no jurisdiction to issue the warrant. A May 1 ordinance had assigned all cases investigated by the Department of Money Laundering Investigation exclusively to the Special Court, leaving the district court's April 6 warrant legally dead on arrival. The bench found that both the state and the lower court had skipped proper procedure at every step. The Deubas, in Hong Kong since February, had already watched Interpol turn down Nepal Police's red notice request because of insufficient documentation.

Read more: The Hindu (medical travel claim), Spotlight Nepal (Deuba cooperation stance), Online Khabar (Special Court jurisdiction), The Kathmandu Post (warrant nullification), myRepublica (arrest unnecessary claim)

Lamichhane's Charge Sheet Goes on a Diet

Kaski District Court on Friday stripped the two most serious charges from the Suryadarshan Cooperative fraud case, removing organized crime and money laundering counts against RSP chair Rabi Lamichhane and nearly 50 co-defendants, leaving only the cooperative fraud charge standing. Judge Himlal Belbase approved the amendment at the request of the Kaski district government attorney's office, which was acting on instructions from the Office of the Attorney General. The court offered three reasons. The victims' original complaint never included those charges, the government didn't pursue them in its first charge-sheet, and keeping them on the books would get in the way of settlement talks and complicate any recovery of depositors' savings.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (co-defendants), The Himalayan Times (bail amounts)

Delhi Skips PM, Rings the Chairman

Rabi Lamichhane, whose RSP won close to a two-thirds majority in the last elections, will be in New Delhi starting June 1 for a three-day visit. He is scheduled to meet Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, and Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, among others. The invitation came from India's Ministry of External Affairs, with no official communication from the RSP to Kathmandu's Foreign Ministry about the trip. Modi had already called PM Balen Shah after the elections to congratulate him and extend an invitation, but that visit remains unscheduled.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (Lipulekh dispute), Online Khabar (RSP election majority)

Oli's Deputies Show Him the Door

At Saturday's UML Secretariat meeting, Deputy General Secretary Yogesh Bhattarai reportedly told KP Sharma Oli that the party couldn’t move forward under him and he should step aside. The day before, on Friday, vice chairpersons Bishnu Paudel, Gokarna Bista, Prithvi Subba Gurung, and Raghu Pant made the same demand. General Secretary Shankar Pokharel told Saturday's session the party couldn’t continue in its current condition, but it isn’t clear if the demands have any chance of being met in the near term.

Three More Years in the Poor Kids' Club

Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal wrote to the UN Committee for Development Policy on May 13 asking to push Nepal's graduation from Least Developed Country status back to November 2029, three years beyond the original November 2026 date. The official reasoning cites five issues, including geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions, slow implementation of the Smooth Transition Strategy, lingering pandemic damage, and Middle East conflict squeezing remittance flows. The ILO previously warned that graduating on schedule could cost roughly 132,000 jobs and nearly a billion USD in economic losses within five years, as garments, carpets, and pashmina would get hit with higher tariffs and stricter rules of origin. The Smooth Transition Strategy that was supposed to use the intervening years to build export competitiveness has, by the government's admission, moved more slowly than was expected.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (35% employment drop), The Kathmandu Post (minister quotes), Nepali Times (budget growth targets)

Desert Mirage Sends 80,000 Nepalis Home

About 80,000 Nepali workers are losing their jobs as Saudi Arabia scales back NEOM, the wild mega-project whose initial $500 billion price tag has grown to a jaw-dropping $8.8 trillion, and at least one internal audit suggesting full completion could take another half century plus. The 80k is a meaningful slice of the ~400,000 Nepalis who work in Saudi Arabia. Falling oil prices and the runaway cost overruns have pushed the Saudi government to redirect money toward the 2030 Riyadh World Expo and the 2034 FIFA World Cup, fixtures that will be considerably cheaper than building a 170-kilometer twin-skyscraper city in the desert. To put the numbers in to context, the $8.8 trillion figure is roughly 25 times Saudi Arabia's yearly national budget and nearly ten times the value of the $925 billion Public Investment Fund.

Read more: Ratopati

Monsoon Bill Comes Due Early

Humla's Danfe Basic School is gone, swept away by a pre-monsoon rainstorm on Tuesday night that also buried homes and destroyed crop fields belonging to 67 households. Two glacial lakes above Tilgaun in the same district burst last May and are leaking again. The municipality says they have no budget to deal with them and so far there’s been no federal response. Farther east, Friday night's flooding knocked out four hydropower projects along the Taplejung-Panchthar border, taking 55 MW offline. The 25 MW Kabeli B-1 may need two weeks to clear debris from its intake, and the 9.9 MW Iwa Khola project could be out for several months after damage to its dam site and pipeline. So, not pretty by any measure. While all of this is brewing, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority has approved this year’s monsoon response plan, and has set aside Rs 7.56 billion ($49.7 million) to support an estimate that 51,868 households (about a quarter million people) will be affected. The monsoon hasn't officially arrived yet.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (Karnali loss history), Spotlight Nepal (Iwa Khola timeline), Ratopati (volunteer mobilization), The Rising Nepal (force breakdown), The Kathmandu Post (substation damage)

Measles Spreads as Vaccine Stocks Run Dry

Measles has infected more than 300 children in seven districts so far this year. Ring vaccinations went ahead in only one district and one municipality, because Nepal has no buffer vaccine stocks and no emergency budget to speak of. A 200,000-dose shipment from an aid agency arrived months after an emergency request, but the chief of the Immunisation Section says it won't cover all the affected areas. A Health Ministry official, speaking anonymously, pointed the finger at the RSP government's decision to cut contract health workers and vaccinators.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Rush Hour at 8,848 Metres

A week ago today, 274 climbers reached the Everest summit from the Nepali side in a single day, a feat that improves (?) upon the previous record of 223 set in 2019. The lineup ran from the Balcony right to the top and some climbers were stuck in the death zone for up to five hours. The season's numbers are aggressive. This year Nepal issued 494 Everest permits, the most since Hillary and Tenzing first scaled the peak in 1953, and took in about $7 million in royalties for their effors. China has issued no permits from the Tibetan side this year, so every climber is moving through Nepal, which helps explain the pressure on the ropes. A growing chorus in the industry wants the government to scrap the May 31 season cutoff, arguing the original rationale, long monsoon marches from the foothills, no longer applies, and that year-round access would spread the load and the revenue. Three deaths have been reported so far this season.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (nationality breakdown), Nepali Times (season cutoff debate), DW (gender split)

Seized Collateral, Squeezed Cash

Non-banking assets at BFIs reached Rs 46.10 billion ($303 million) as of mid-April, up 20 percent from a year earlier, as banks are forced to sit on foreclosed properties they can't auction fast enough to make any difference. Himalayan Bank topped the table at Rs 6.08 billion ($40 million) and Prime Bank's pile more than doubled to Rs 4.99 billion ($33 million). The Supreme Court only recently ruled that BFIs are able to auction seized assets beyond the previous three-year limit.

Read more: myRepublica (bank-level breakdown), myRepublica (auction mechanics)

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back - hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share Nepal Weekly

Nepal Weekly - 2026-05-20

Wed, 20 May 2026 03:15:10 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Kaushal Subedi on Unsplash

Subscribe now

Fourth in Seniority, First in the Robes

Dr. Manoj Kumar Sharma was sworn in as Nepal's 33rd Chief Justice on Tuesday, the completion of an arc from parliamentary hearing to an oath in front of President Paudel to assumption of office in a single day. The Constitutional Council had recommended Sharma on May 7, passing over Acting Chief Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla and two other, more senior, judges, to reach the fourth name on the seniority list, the first time in Nepali judicial history that the order has been skipped so far down. The mechanism that made it possible was PM Balendra Shah's Constitutional Council ordinance, which handed the chairman a tiebreaker veto, and which the President tried and failed to send back. Before Sharma arrived at Ram Shah Path, the court's administration had been refusing to register writ petitions challenging his appointment; Acting Chief Justice Malla put out an order saying that filings needed to be accepted by 1 p.m. that day, and said the refusal was an obstruction “to the path of justice.” The Nepal Bar Association staged a protest while the hearing was running. Sixteen complaints were filed against Sharma before the parliamentary committee unanimously endorsed him anyway.

Read more: The Annapurna Express (oath ceremony), Ratopati (term length, pending caseload), Online Khabar (Malla's writ order), Indianexpress (ordinance mechanism), Khabarhub (timeline)

Four Months to Dodge the Black List

David Shannon has been running mutual evaluations since 2002, is on his 24th, and isn't the kind of assessor who flies in when things are going well. The APG's Deputy Executive Secretary arrived in Kathmandu on Sunday, led Monday meetings at the PM's office with finance, home, law, the attorney general, the central bank, and the security agencies, and then made his dissatisfaction with Nepal's pace of reform unmistakably clear to those present. A confidential APG Secretariat briefing note indicates that this as the final high-level intervention before the September 2026 review that’s going to decide whether Nepal exits the grey list or drops onto the black one. The 15-point action plan that was supposed to demonstrate progress is, per the same note, “not adequately prepared.”

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Billions Parked but Records Conveniently Missing

Nepal's cumulative public sector financial irregularities reached Rs755.17 billion ($4.97 billion) by the end of fiscal year 2024-25. The Auditor General's 63rd annual report, sent to President Ramchandra Paudel on Friday, audited Rs9.48 trillion of spending by 5,526 public offices and found the government settled Rs63.12 billion in arrears over the year, only to immediately outpace that with new expenses. Auditor General Toyam Raya said that 179 offices worth Rs147.9 billion in expenditure couldn't be audited at all, because records went missing during last September's protests.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (digital payment reforms), Ratopati (unnecessary ballast spend), myRepublica (179 offices breakdown)

Auditors Found What Auditors Find

An independent review of 10 commercial banks, commissioned by Nepal Rastra Bank at the IMF's insistence as a condition for the fourth tranche of Extended Credit Facility funding, turned up the usual problems. Evergreened loans, inflated collateral, and provisioning dressed up to keep capital adequacy ratios above the regulatory floor. Average NPLs in the 10 banks was 7.6 percent, and capital adequacy reported to be 11.30 percent. Himalayan Bank, NIC Asia, Prabhu Bank, Kumari Bank, and Rastriya Banijya Bank are looking at capital top-ups to stay compliant. The NRB is asking for clarifications from the banks before telling them how to get their houses in order.

Read more: myRepublica (NPL audit), myRepublica (asset declaration), myRepublica (Rs 4.6B sale), The Kathmandu Post (banker condemnation)

Win an Election Then We'll Talk

Seven weeks into his premiership, Balendra Shah has yet to address the House of Representatives on his government's policy agenda, and the finance minister's response to critics made clear the administration isn't losing sleep over it. Swarnim Wagle told opposition lawmakers this week that if they want their "language, style, and documents" reflected in government policy, they should win the next election. Surya Kiran Gurung, former secretary-general of the parliamentary secretariat, said no prime minister since the 1990 restoration of democracy had remained absent throughout deliberations on the government's own policy document. RSP MP Amaresh Kumar Singh, a six-time parliamentarian, was more direct as he told the House this was the first budget discussion in his twenty-year career held without the finance minister bothering to show up.

Read more: myRepublica (NC protest threat), Ratopati (Wagle election retort), Desh Sanchar (Singh's unprecedented claim), The Kathmandu Post (Speaker's Rule 38), myRepublica (PM's repeated absences)

Chinese Drones Fly While American Drones Wait

Nepal's Home Ministry sent Trump's South Asia envoy Sergio Gor home empty-handed on May 1, refusing a flight permit for the Alta X Gen 2 drone as Gor's team helicoptered into Everest base camp to test it. The ministry's internal memo cited "drone flying procedures" and "security sensitivity." The Americans had hired Seven Summit Treks and arranged local pilots, but the drone never left the ground. DJI's FlyCart 100, an unreleased model given to Nepali operator AirLift Technology before its commercial launch, has been hauling up to 45kg to Camp I in under three minutes this season. China set up that foothold in 2024 with the FlyCart 30; Washington is still waiting on paperwork. While the US team was packing up, the Department of Tourism published a record 492 Everest permits for 2026 on May 8, beating the 2023 record of 479 despite repeated government promises to thin the herd. Chinese climbers topped the list at 109, ahead of 76 Americans and 61 Indians, generating roughly $7.19 million (just over a billion rupees) in permit fees.

Read more: Al Jazeera (geopolitical framing), Snowbrains (waste fee, fatalities)

Congress Plans Its Own Republic Day

The Deuba-Khadka faction is expected to register a new party on May 29, Republic Day, after the Supreme Court's April 17 ruling confirmed Gagan Thapa's group as the official Nepali Congress. Former acting party president Purna Bahadur Khadka, who has been running parallel activities since the ruling, says the party is already "in a fragmented state" and has said the choice was to unite or split. Deuba broke from Congress in 2002 to form Nepali Congress (Democratic); he is now in Hong Kong as the government works on a money-laundering arrest warrant against him and his wife.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (38-seat losses), myRepublica (Khadka)

Satellite Sees Drought, Cuts Check

A $100,000 insurance payout, the first of its kind in Nepal, arrived in Bajura district after satellites found soil moisture below agreed levels and released funds automatically, with no on-the-ground damage assessment required. The parametric product was built by Global Parametrics with a catalytic grant from the Natural Disaster Fund, backed by the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Germany's KfW. Tearfund and local partner International Nepal Fellowship used the money to feed 671 households, distribute drought-resistant seeds and tools to 405 people, and install irrigation tanks for 176 households.

Read more: Christiantoday (Tearfund response), Reinsurancene WS (Global Parametrics role)

Spilled Watts Mean a Cooked Dinner

A rural kitchen in Baglung's Badigad municipality apparently became the site of Asia's first green hydrogen cooking demonstration on May 15 (seems hard to believe, but that’s what they’re saying), with Gandaki Province's economic affairs minister on hand to light the flame. The HyHEG project, run by Nepal Energy Foundation and Kathmandu University with backing from Innovate UK and Swiss partners, runs a 5 kW electrolyzer off the GiringdiKhola micro-hydro plant to turn surplus electricity into stored hydrogen. One kilogram is enough to fuel a five-person home for a week, the result of nearly three years of testing on micro-hydro sites under 500 kW that the national grid has made mostly idle.

Nepal Weekly - 2026-05-13

Wed, 13 May 2026 03:03:14 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Aaron Santelices on Unsplash

Subscribe now

Seven Percent Growth Plan Inspires a Walkout

President Ram Chandra Paudel delivered the government's FY 2083/84 (2026/27) policy and program to a joint parliamentary session on Monday, with targets that include 7% annual growth over the next decade, 30,000 MW of electricity in the same timeframe, and the integration of all economic transactions into digital platforms. Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle, appearing before the Finance Committee the same day, put some numbers on the ambition. Regular government obligations run about Rs 13.3 trillion ($87 billion), leaving a shortfall of roughly Rs 7 trillion ($46 billion) even before any new projects are begun. The opposition was unmoved. UML parliamentary leader Ram Bahadur Thapa said the document "entirely rejectable," the Nepali Congress dismissed it as a continuation of old policies, and the RPP accused the government of producing a "copy-paste" document that forgot Karnali and Sudurpashchim existed. The harshest critique came from inside Prime Minister Balen Shah's own base when Gen Z activist Tanuja Pandey publicly told him to stop acting "like a ruffian" after Shah walked out of parliament as the President was still reading the policy that his cabinet had written.

Read more: The Himalayan Times (policy targets), myRepublica (digital economy), Khabarhub (opposition), The Rising Nepal (Rs 7 trillion shortfall), myRepublica (Pandey's rebuke)

Balen's Blitz Meets the Bench

The Supreme Court has frozen three of Prime Minister Balendra Shah's signature moves this week. The justices issued interim orders against his push to scrap civil service trade unions, his dissolution of the Free Student Union, and his riverbank eviction drive that left more than 3,000 families needing to register for emergency shelter. The Nepal Bar Association's executive chairman says the court's intervention shows that the executive "has acted illegally.” Before that dust settled, Shah's Constitutional Council on May 8 recommended Dr. Manoj Kumar Sharma as the next chief justice, skipping over three more-senior justices, including Acting Chief Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla, who called on fellow judges not to bow to a two-thirds majority or threats of impeachment. The government rests its case on Sharma's CV, saying he has a PhD in Labour Law from Tribhuvan University, has a stronger case disposal record, better academic credentials, and a cleaner reputation than those passed over.

Read more: Ratopati, myRepublica (seniority convention breach), The Hindu (RSP election mandate)

Reserves Pile Up, Nobody's Borrowing

Gross foreign exchange reserves were Rs 3.494 trillion ($22.99 billion) by mid-April, up 30.5 percent from mid-July 2025, and enough to cover 21.8 months of imports. The balance of payments surplus doubled year-on-year to $5.10 billion, and the current account surplus tripled to $4.32 billion from $1.64 billion. Reserves held by banks outside the NRB grew fastest, up 56.8 percent to Rs 412.32 billion ($2.71 billion). Reserves are now 57.2 percent of GDP, with Indian currency making up a fifth of total holdings. Banks are sitting on Rs 79.52 trillion ($523 billion) in deposits against Rs 58.74 trillion ($386 billion) worth of lending. Interbank rates are 2.75 percent and private credit demand remains flat.

Meta's Billions Exist Only in the Press Release

WorldLink CEO Keshav Nepal told Kantipur this week that there is no agreement, no NDA, and no $33 million Meta investment in a local data center, despite Nepal Khabar reporting exactly that. "If a foreign investment of that size were coming in, we would have announced it through a formal event," he said. Nepal Khabar headlined a Bichuten Data Vault announcement as "Google enters Nepal as strategic partner" when, in truth, Google is only supplying technical services, not capital.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Delhi Bails Out Paddy Season

Cabinet approved an emergency buy of 80,000 tonnes of fertilizer from India under a government-to-government arrangement, with paddy transplantation season weeks away and global prices still running hot thanks to the ongoing West Asia pressures. The fertilizer haul breaks down to 60,000 tonnes of urea and 20,000 tonnes of DAP, well short of the 150,000 tonnes that was originally being looked for. Agriculture Ministry official Ram Krishna Shrestha said that full subsidization would cost roughly Rs 80 billion ($526 million), against a Rs 28.82 billion ($190 million) budget. A fresh tender would take at least 225 days, but paddy season can’t wait.

Social Media Pays

PM Balendra Shah's required asset disclosure listed Rs 14.6 million ($96,000) in cash, with Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok named as the primary sources. Nepal Rastra Bank says that's not a problem. The central bank has a category for audiovisual remittances, and 4.6 million Facebook followers plus 1.3 million YouTube subscribers apparently qualify. Nepal pulled in Rs 3.53 billion ($23.2 million) from digital platforms in FY2024-25, and the first eight months of the current fiscal year have already booked Rs 2.90 billion ($19.1 million), up from Rs 2.24 billion ($14.7 million) a year earlier. Google's platforms account for 67 percent of inflows, Meta another 12.21 percent. The Rastra Bank admits the real figure is higher, since direct brand deals between creators and companies would not fall under the tracked categories.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Export the Beans, Import the Powder

Nepal imported 979,130 kg of coffee worth Rs 1.847 billion ($12.2 million) in the first nine months of FY2025/26, even as it exported 33,772 kg for Rs 71.8 million ($472,000). Ninety-seven percent of those exports were raw, unroasted beans heading to Japan, Germany, and the US under the "Himalayan Speciality Coffee" label at premium prices. What fills Kathmandu's cafes is mostly instant coffee from Vietnam and India, with processed extracts and concentrates accounting for Rs 1.508 billion ($9.9 million) of the import bill. Domestic production is 641 tonnes against annual demand of more than 2,800 tonnes.

Read more: Online Khabar

Russia's 13-Project Offer Gathers Dust at Singha Durbar

Russia laid 13 infrastructure projects on the table in 2023, a railway line and road construction among them, following talks between then-National Assembly Chairman Ganesh Prasad Timilsina and Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko in Moscow. The Russian Embassy followed up with a formal letter to Timilsina on May 4 of that year. Nepal's Foreign Ministry still hasn't sent a formal reply. The files apparently never made it out of the building. By December 2025, Russia's Chargé d'Affaires Andrei Kiselenko was publicly grumbling about the "red tape" that confined the proposals to filing cabinets, saying it was "somewhat difficult to understand" the delay.

Read more: Online Khabar

A $4,000 Surcharge That Hasn’t Stung

Nepal has handed out 492 Everest climbing permits for spring 2026, a record, after raising the foreign climbing royalty from $11,000 to $15,000 to try and thin the herd. Department of Tourism spokesperson Himal Gautam trumpeted the new high-water mark by saying "Records are to be broken!" An 11-member group is still working through paperwork, so the tally still climb a bit further (no pun intended). For context, permits issued were 381 in 2019, 479 in 2023, 421 in 2024, and 456 in 2025. Rope-fixing ran two weeks behind schedule after a serac collapsed on the route to Camp I, and ropes have now reached the South Col at 7,906 meters.

Smart Cell's Carcass Draws a Crowd

Smart Cell's license was automatically cancelled in mid-April 2023 after the telecom failed to clear roughly Rs 30 billion ($197 million) in arrears, putting its towers, network, and systems under Nepal Telecommunications Authority control. Former chairman Sarvesh Joshi has since been arrested by the CIB on fraud and criminal breach of trust charges. Banks that hold the towers and equipment as loan collateral are now keen to auction them off, but nobody has settled whether government seizure or bank collateral rights come first.

Read more: Ratopati

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back - hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share Nepal Weekly

Nepal Weekly - 2026-05-06

Wed, 06 May 2026 02:20:23 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Stan Tuladhar on Unsplash

Subscribe now

Two Neighbors on One Pass

Prime Minister Balen Shah's government sent diplomatic notes to India and China last week objecting to the 2026 Kailash Mansarovar Yatra running through Lipulekh Pass, a high-altitude crossing at the Nepal-India-Tibet tri-junction that Kathmandu has claimed as its own under the 1816 Sugauli Treaty. India's response was quick: the External Affairs Ministry called the territorial claim "neither justified nor based on historical facts," and labelled it a "unilateral artificial enlargement." This is the second such protest in under a year; Kathmandu filed the first in August 2025 when India and China reopened border trade through the same pass.

Read more: Indiatoday IN (Nepal's demand), Indianexpress (negotiation precondition), The Tribune (Jaiswal), Economic Times (religious significance), Hindustan Times (pilgrim batch breakdown)

Bulldozers First and Questions Later

Shree Saraswati Basic School in Manohara had 275 students and 15 teachers when the bulldozers showed up without notice. Staff only realized the building was coming down when police started hauling out belongings; the CCTV cameras, router, and library books got buried, though the new textbooks made it out. On Monday, students turned up anyway, dragging desks and benches into a borrowed community hall in Madhyapur Thimi, where principal Indira Mahat is running multi-grade classes in two rooms and under courtyard tents. The Supreme Court has ordered the government to come up with documents showing how the required process was followed at Manohara and four other eviction sites. We’ll see if they have any.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (1.2M landless), Online Khabar (school mergers), Khabarhub (Supreme Court, protests)

Six Thousand Rupees and a Prayer

More than 76,000 depositors have filed claims worth over Rs 45 billion ($296 million) against failed cooperatives, and the government's response is to point to a revolving fund that holds about 0.54 percent of total claims (Rs 250 million or ~$1.6 million). The Problematic Cooperative Management Committee has been able to claw back another Rs 350 million ($2.3 million) from debtors, but split between the 58,000 smaller savers, each person's share works out to only about Rs 6,000 ($39). Returning money to that group alone would take roughly Rs 6.66 billion ($43.8 million). Minister Pratibha Rawal says debtor names will be published and bank accounts frozen after a 35-day notice period. Committee Chairman Dilliram Acharya says the fund "will not be spent easily."

Read more: Ratopati

Sixty Thousand Souls Hit the Exit

Around 2,075 Nepalis board flights for foreign jobs every day, and the Department of Foreign Employment counted 62,265 departures in the 31 (or 32? days - it’s not clear how they counted) between March 25 and April 26. A temporary stop on labor approvals for 12 Gulf and West Asian countries between March 1 and April 20 barely dented the numbers. The figures don't fully capture the whole picture. Workers like Dhan Bahadur Gurung, a 47-year-old who earned Rs 35,000 ($230) a month in Saudi Arabia, says he drank four or five energy drinks instead of water to push through the heat, and came home with kidneys that had given up. He now does dialysis three times a week, four hours at a time. Apparently his situation isn’t rare.

Read more: myRepublica (monthly departure headcounts), Online Khabar (kidney failure costs), The Kathmandu Post (SSF remittance share).

Ordnances Coming and Going

President Paudel signed a Constitutional Council ordinance on Tuesday after at first sending it back to cabinet. The amendment changes how the Constitutional Council operates and the details are thin, but the way it was has gone back and forth is an indication that something may be afoot. The same day, the Communications Ministry invoked the new "Special Provision Ordinance on the Removal of Public Officials from Office" to clear out 36 politically appointed office-holders in nine agencies, including the chairs of Gorkhapatra Sansthan, Press Council Nepal, the Nepal Telecommunications Authority, and the National Information Commission. Opposition lawmakers cried foul and said it was a bypass of parliament by a government that already holds close to a two-thirds majority and could legislate through the House if it wanted to.

Read more: The Rising Nepal (36 officials), The Annapurna Express (constitutional basis), The Himalayan Times (return-reissue sequence)

Holding Center On The Flood Plain

Ujyalo Nepal Party chairman Kulman Ghising visited the Kirtipur holding center last week and found 3,159 screened squatters crammed into tents on flood-prone government land, with kids missing school and families unable to service bank loans after losing jobs and businesses. One person has has already died by suicide. RSP wants the government to park the bulldozers everywhere except already-acquired state land until an empowered authority finishes a full report on the squatter problem.

Read more: myRepublica (RSP manifesto commitment), Ratopati (Ghising visit findings)

Widows Win Back Inheritance

The Supreme Court has struck down a provision that forced widows to surrender property inherited from a dead husband the moment that they remarried. A constitutional bench led by Acting Chief Justice Sapana Pradhan Malla ruled Section 214(2) of the 2017 Civil Code was an abridgment of constitutional guarantees of equality, dignified life, and property rights, all of which the old rule suspended at the altar. Under the scrapped sub-section, a remarried widow's first-husband property passed to his children, reverting to her only if there were none.

Carrier Redraws South Asia

Nepal Airlines posted a route map on Wednesday showing all of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh as Pakistani territory, sending #BoycottNepalAirlines trending through Indian social media like a wildfire. The state-owned carrier deleted the post and apologized Thursday, calling it a "cartographic inaccuracy" that did not reflect the official position of either the airline or Nepal. An internal review is underway.

Read more: Newindianexpress (Sugauli Treaty), Republicworld (relations)

Rules for Thee, Not for State-Owned Me

Nine of 37 insurers remain are still below the Nepal Insurance Authority's minimum capital thresholds, three years after the April 2023 deadline. The laggards include two state-owned firms. The NIA has yet to set a new deadline.

Japan Dug It, China To Run It

The government signed a five-year operations and maintenance contract with Yusin-ART JV, a China-Nepal joint venture, to run the Japanese-financed Nagdhunga-Sisnekhola tunnel. The 2,688-meter bore is 98 percent complete, and needs about 150 staff to be fully trained before a full opening that’s expected (hoped for?) within three months. Construction on the tunnel started in October 2019 and initially had a 42-month timeline. Once it opens, the Sisnekhola-to-Balambhu trip will get reduced from 33 minutes uphill to about seven straight though.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Landslides Turn Highway Map Into Swiss Cheese

Pre-monsoon landslides have blocked sections of the Araniko, Mid-Hill, BP, and Kanti Lokpath highways in Lalitpur, Makwanpur, Lamjung, Kavre, and Ilam, as well as the Bhalubang-Pyuthan road. The Araniko Highway at Kodari, the main crossing into China, has been closed since April 29 and, as of yet, has no scheduled date to reopen. A handful of stretches, including Bhojpur and the Beni-Jomsom road in Myagdi, have been able to handle some one-way traffic. Police tell travelers to expect more of the same through the rainy season.

Read more: myRepublica (Araniko closure), The Annapurna Express (Ilam, BP Highway)

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back - hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share Nepal Weekly

Nepal Weekly - 2026-04-29

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 01:53:28 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Raphael Rychetsky on Unsplash

Subscribe now

Oli's Old Playbook

The cabinet summoned a joint parliamentary session on Tuesday, suspended it by Thursday evening, and then recommended the President issue a Constitutional Council ordinance, all before anyone outside the cabinet had a chance to ask why. The President's Office gave "special reasons" for the suspension. The government offered nothing. Senior advocate Surendra Bhandari put it bluntly: a government nearing a two-thirds majority has no legal need for ordinances, and the last time Nepal went this route, KP Sharma Oli packed 52 constitutional posts through exactly this mechanism. The new ordinance would let a body of the Prime Minister, Speaker, Deputy Speaker, National Assembly Chairman, and Chief Justice make appointments by majority vote of whoever shows up, a quorum rule tailor-made for a government that can't guarantee friendly faces across the table. Nepali Congress called it executive encroachment on legislative authority. CPN-UML's Mahesh Basnet called it "childish." President Paudel rejected a near-identical ordinance from the Sushila Karki government months ago.

Read more: Ratopati (quorum rule), myRepublica (suspension), Ratopati (NCP dissent), Khabarhub (cooperative ordinance)

Hong Kong's Most Inconvenient Houseguest

The Cabinet recalled Consul General Bindeswar Prasad Lekhak from Hong Kong on Thursday after officials came to the conclusion that he had been hosting fugitive former PM Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife Arzu Rana Deuba, who have been holed up in Hong Kong's Stanley neighborhood since the third week of April. A Kathmandu District Court handed down an arrest warrant on April 9 on money laundering charges, and the Department of Money Laundering Investigation has frozen all movable and immovable assets registered to the couple and their family. Lekhak, close to Nepali Congress figure and former Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak, has 20 days to report to the Foreign Ministry. Three other consuls general appointed alongside him under the Oli government's political quota are still in their posts.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Bulldozers Hit the Bagmati

Bulldozers hit Thapathali on Saturday and haven't stopped since, working through Gairigaun, Sinamangal, Shantinagar, and into Kageshwari Manohara Municipality by Sunday. The clearance will affect 3,496 households in 27 wards in Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, and Lalitpur, the full scope of informal riverbank settlement documented by the Bagmati Civilization Integrated Development Committee. So far 214 families have come into government contact and are being put up in hotels as officials screen for "genuine squatters" before moving confirmed cases to government apartments in Ward No. 1 of Nagarjun Municipality, with promises of relocation within two weeks. Earlier attempts had stalled for years over coordination gaps between agencies.

Read more: myRepublica (ward locations), Spotlight Nepal (Dasharath Stadium)

The Clean-Hands Cabinet's Dirty Month

Sudan Gurung lasted less than four weeks as Home Minister before resigning on April 22 over alleged share market dealings with another businessman who is in custody on money laundering charges. Gurung helped orchestrate the Gen-Z protests that brought the current government to power on the promise of exactly this kind of accountability, and the Prime Minister had personally overridden RSP chief Rabi Lamichhane's objections to put him in the cabinet. He’s the second minister gone in a month after Labour Minister Deepak Kumar Sah was sacked on April 9 for slotting his wife onto the board of the Nepal Health Insurance Board. The PM has taken on the Home Ministry himself for now.

Read more: myRepublica (Hami Nepal transactions)

India's Tea Test Steeps Nepal's Exporters

Effective May 1, India's Tea Board is demanding lab testing on every tea consignment that crosses the border. For an industry that ships 86 percent of its 15,600 metric tons of yearly exports to a single buyer, this is.. not good news. Agriculture Minister Gita Chaudhary celebrated the 30th National Tea Day on April 28 by promising more investment, new markets, and encouragement for young and women entrepreneurs, but in the meantime, 14,500 metric tons of Nepali tea now are now under the new, slow, and expensive testing regime.

Read more: Ratopati

A Bag of Rice Too Far

Madhesi youth came together at Kathmandu's Maitighar Mandala on Saturday with placards reading "Don't kill the poor people" and "Respect Madhesi people," protesting a customs rule that taxes goods worth more than Rs 100 ($0.66) brought in from India. Rice, sugar, and household basics from a morning market trip are now getting scrutiny at the border. Delhi has noticed, and MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said India is "aware of reports." The rule, rolled out a couple weeks ago during the Nepali New Year, is making things unpleasant for people across the Terai.

Read more: Hindustan Times (MEA), MSN (Home Minister)

Thirteen Days to Empty

Petrol went up to a price of Rs 232 ($1.53) per liter, as the new government has raised prices four times in a month. The more concerning figure is the 13 days that is apparently the entire strategic petroleum reserve (as compared to the 90-day target Nepal committed to after India's 2015 blockade left hospitals short of medicine, factories shuttered, and earthquake relief stuck in queues while black-market petrol sold roadside in mineral water bottles for triple the official rate). The Lothar oil terminal remains under construction, and other expansion plans exist on paper, but that’s not going to offer much relief any time soon.

Mosquitoes Find Their Way to Everest Base Camp

Aedes mosquitoes have been confirmed at 2,438m in Jumla, well above the 2,100m ceiling that researchers long considered their upper limit. Dengue was found in 76 of Nepal's 77 districts during 2024 and 2025. Solu Khumbu, home to Everest base camp, has reported infections in patients with no travel history, suggesting that the vector itself is making its arrival known. Researchers blame warming temperatures and a thickening road network for ferrying both mosquito and the virus into Himalayan valleys.

Temple Ball, Take Two

Nearly fifty years after Nepal banned the cannabis trade that once made its "temple ball" hashish a hippie rite-of-passage, two subnational governments are cracking the door back open. Gandaki Province has put forward a legalization bill covering medicinal and industrial use (that bill is now sitting with the Economic Development Committee), and Ilam Municipality has begun a pilot that allows farmers grow hemp for fiber (although that’s being monitored to protect against diversion). Both developments chip away at the freeze that was put in place with the 1976 Narcotic Drugs Control Act. Chief Minister Surendra Raj Pandey, who put a cannabis cultivation study in his 100-day list, has been talking up the crop from the assembly floor down.

Nepal Weekly - 2026-04-22

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 05:02:14 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Kabi Acharya on Unsplash

Subscribe now

The Minister Who Can't Stop Making News

Home Minister Sudan Gurung, a founding shareholder in Star Micro Insurance and Liberty Micro Life, is battling resignation calls from the Nepali Congress, civil society groups, and even voices within his own RSP after documents surfaced connecting both companies to Deepak Bhatt, now under arrest in a Rs 3.7 billion ($24.3 million) money laundering investigation. PM Balendra Shah has demanded a clarification (in writing), which Gurung's secretariat says it has supplied. Gurung's defense rests on a few points: his Rs 2.5 million stake was disclosed inside a Rs 20 million ($132,000) portfolio on the Council of Ministers' website, all transactions went through banking channels, and money laundering cases fall to the Finance Ministry's investigation department, not his Home Ministry. It’s not a bad argument, but less convenient for the minister is the now-deleted social media post in which he quoted Bill Gates on why dying poor is your own fault. Gurung, for now, is still in office.

Read more: myRepublica (declaration discrepancies), Nepali Times (loan-funded shares), myRepublica (civil society demands), Online Khabar (minister's defense), The Himalayan Times (jurisdiction argument)

Washington Calls on Kathmandu, Skips the Top Floor

S. Paul Kapur, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, finished a three-day Kathmandu visit Wednesday without ever sitting down with the Prime Minister. The gap was deliberate as the US side apparently never requested the meeting. Kapur did work through much of the rest of the cabinet, meeting Foreign Minister Shishir Khanal and Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle, who both promised to help clear the way for FDI. The ICT pitch was the clearest tell of Washington's priorities when Kapur met American Chamber of Commerce leaders and posted publicly about "digital infrastructure, AI adoption, cybersecurity, and sharing US technological expertise." That’s language that tracks closely with Washington's effort to keep Huawei out of the country's 5G rollout (Huawei now supplies most of Nepal's 4G equipment). The finance ministry meeting also resulting in the airing of a list of American grievances, including unresolved tax disputes involving Cotiviti, Coca-Cola, and the Dolma Impact Fund. Wagle said those would be handled through legal channels.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (elections context), Socialnews Xyz (RSP meeting, 5G framing), The Annapurna Express (immigration topic), The Kathmandu Post (MCC compact, tax disputes), The Kathmandu Post (ministers' FDI pledges)

The Hundred-Rupee Border War

Armed Police Force staff with loudspeakers have spread out over the 1,750-kilometer Indian border, announcing that no exemption will apply to civilians, government employees, or NGO workers on Indian goods worth more than Rs 100 (about $0.75, or 63 Indian rupees). The rule has always been on the books, but now the government plans to enforce it. Teams of customs officers, revenue investigators, district officials, and police have been searching pedestrians, cyclists, and sniffing through shopping bags. Duties are from 5 to 80 percent depending on the item. Nearly 50 rural markets along Bihar's 378-kilometer border say they’ve seen a drop in Nepali footfall during peak wedding season. Rajiv Jha, a member of Shah's own Rastriya Swatantra Party, says the limit is "extremely low and impractical."

Read more: Economic Times (Birgunj protests), Times of India (Rs60 lakh baseline), The Kathmandu Post (vehicle fee schedule), Times of India (shopkeeper quotes), The Kathmandu Post (45% price gap)

Graduation Day, No Cap and Gown

Development assistance collapsed 73 percent year-on-year in the first months of the 2025-26 fiscal year, dropping from Rs 37.18 billion ($250 million) to Rs 9.54 billion ($64 million), a preview of what November's LDC graduation is going to look like on the ground. EU and Japanese trade preferences cushioning apparel and textile exports will disappear when the diploma is given.

Thapa Wins the Party, Inherits Rubble

Nepal's Supreme Court on April 17 gave Gagan Thapa clean legal title to the Nepali Congress presidency, upholding the Election Commission's recognition of the Central Working Committee elected at January's convention and ending Sher Bahadur Deuba's three-month rearguard action. The ruling is unambiguous but the math is not. NC won only 38 of 275 seats in March, its worst showing ever, and Thapa himself resigned after the results before the CWC refused to accept it. The Deuba camp, now operating under former acting president Purna Bahadur Khadka, agreed on Saturday to accept the verdict, then gathered at a Dhumbarahi hotel on Sunday afternoon to work out what comes next.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (judges named), Thewire In (RSP competition), myRepublica (Thapa quotes), Desh Sanchar (Deuba camp reaction), The Kathmandu Post (seat-loss figures)

Rule 259, Written for a Friend

The House of Representatives Rules Drafting Committee handed its draft procedural code to Speaker Dol Prasad Aryal on Tuesday, and tucked inside it was Rule 259, which sets aside parliamentary regulations as federal special law and a "special privilege of the House." The committee was led by RSP lawmaker Ganesh Parajuli, and opposition members wasted little time reading the fine print. The provision, they say, is engineered to shield RSP Chairman Rabi Lamichhane from the cases now working their way through the courts.

Read more: The Rising Nepal (committee process stats), Khabarhub (Speaker refinement plan), Ratopati (Rule 259 controversy), Ratopati (petition filer named), The Rising Nepal (court rejection confirmed)

Wagle to Investment Board: Two Out of Fifty-Five is "Shameful"

Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle told the Investment Board's monitoring committee on Tuesday it was "shameful" that just 2 of 55 approved foreign investment projects have reached the construction stage, and asked on the record who, exactly, is responsible. If the 14th meeting shows no improvement, he warned, the government will take "strict measures." The same week, Wagle told cabinet ministers they can add new budget lines only by cutting old ones, and did away with the long-standing practice of "abanda" unallocated budget allocations from fiscal 2083/84.

Read more: Ratopati (advisor quotes), Ratopati (budget figures), Wionews (legal barrier)

Balen's Wealth Hunters Get Badges, Not Handcuffs

Retired Supreme Court Justice Rajendra Kumar Bhandari is chairing a new commission with a mandate to scrub through the assets of every major political figure and senior official who has held office since 2005, including former prime ministers Deuba, Oli, and Dahal. Cabinet authorized the panel on April 15, nineteen days after the government was sworn in. The commission is empowered to collect, review, and verify asset declarations, but what it can’tt do is arrest or prosecute. Actionable findings get handed to the CIAA and the Department of Money Laundering Investigation. A second phase, as per the government's published reform plan, is expected eventually reach back to 1990.

Read more: Nepal News (286 officials count), OCCRP (10 arrests noted)

USAID Exit Hits Family Planning

The Health Ministry has cut its contraceptive budget 32% to Rs 170 million ($1.1 million) for fiscal year 2026-27, and UNFPA has slashed its annual contribution from $3.2 million to $1.06 million after USAID suspended grants to both the ministry and the UN agency. Shelves are stocked for now, but Sarmila Dahal, who heads family planning at the Department of Health Services, has been clear about the consequences. "If the budget is not increased, there will be a shortage." The last stockout dragged on for about two years. Half of Nepal's 1.2 million pregnancies in 2017 were unintended, and nearly 359,000 of those ended in abortion.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Rubber Stamp to Red Pen

Australian student visa approvals for Nepali applicants collapsed from 96.8% in June 2025 to 38.7% in February, a drop the Department of Home Affairs has been careful not to call a crackdown. The consistent failure point appears to be money, since many applicants show loans enough to cover only the first year, sudden large account deposits with no savings history, self-declared income streams that can't be verified, and multiple income sources conveniently totaling the benchmark figure.

NEPSE Gives Traders More Rope

The Nepal Stock Exchange widened its daily circuit breaker from 10 percent to 15 percent this week in the biggest shakeup to local trading mechanics in years. The new rules also let investors place buy and sell orders around the clock, though execution will remain pinned to the 11am-3pm window and round-the-clock ordering won't kick in until NEPSE issues a formal implementation order, which it hasn't got around to yet. Intraday safeguards have been redesigned as well. Now a 5 percent move in the morning session will be cause for a 15-minute trading halt, and an 8 percent swing after 1pm will shut the market for the rest of the day. The pre-open price band has been widened to 5 percent from 2 percent, and the regular-session order band loosened to 3 percent from 2 percent.

Read more: myRepublica (effective date), The Kathmandu Post (Sebon approval)

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back - hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share Nepal Weekly

Nepal Weekly - 2026-04-15

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:09:10 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Jochen van Wylick on Unsplash

Subscribe now

Private Press Prints Its Protest

Dozens of private newspapers blanked their front pages with giant question marks on Monday in protest of an April 1 order that funnels all government advertising exclusively to state-owned Gorkhapatra, Radio Nepal, and Nepal Television. Nepal Samacharpatra, Rajdhani, Madhyanha, and others replaced headlines and body text with the symbols, in a unified opposition to a policy they say threatens their survival. Private outlets collectively receive around Rs 3.84 billion ($25 million) from a total government ad budget of Rs 10.39 billion ($68 million). State media gets roughly Rs 1 billion ($6.6 million). The government says it's cutting costs and standardizing outreach, but media houses counter that choking off revenue will collapse everything from printing plants to journalism schools. Private publishers also claim roughly Rs 3.25 billion ($21 million) is already lost to corruption, so there may be better places to save a buck.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (corruption claim), myRepublica (journalist response)

Show Us the Receipts

Balen's cabinet made their asset details public on April 12, a little less than three weeks after taking office, a first for Nepal. Its seems, however, that transparency without documentation might be riskier than silence. Prime Minister Shah listed social media as his main income source, with Rs 14.6 million ($96,000) in the bank and four million Facebook followers but no land to his name. Home Minister Sudan Gurung said he’s got 89 tolas of gold and Rs 43.1 million ($284,000) in stock market investments. The numbers caused street protests at Maitighar Mandala, as demonstrators demanded proof of income sources as well as tax records. Former Finance Secretary Rameshwar Khanal said that tax filings should carry more weight than public declarations, which is maybe a polite way of saying the ministers' explanations need receipts.

Read more: Online Khabar (asset amounts), myRepublica (protest)

Balen's Growth Target Meets Gravity

The new government published a five-year plan on Tuesday that ~~dreams of~~ targets 7% average annual growth, $100 billion in GDP, as well as 1.5 million new jobs. The World Bank and Asian Development Bank both think that FY26 growth is going to slow down to between 2.3% and 2.7%, reduced from an already uninspired 4.6% showing last year. The PM’s draft "national commitment" document, which folds his Rastriya Swatantra Party's 100-point agenda in with manifestos from six other parliamentary parties, wants to more than double per capita income from $1,400 to $3,000 and cut “multidimensional” poverty to 10%. Let’s see.

Read more: Spotlight Nepal (ADB inflation forecast), Khabarhub (policy specifics)

Seventeen Ambassadors, No Pecking Order

Balen Shah pulled off something no Nepali prime minister has tried before: he sat down with 17 ambassadors and diplomatic mission heads at once on April 8, treating India, China, the United States, Japan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Qatar, and the UN Resident Coordinator as equals in the same meeting. Past leaders met foreign envoys in more informal settings, preserving the traditional hierarchy where New Delhi and Beijing got separate, carefully calibrated attention. The joint session flips that script by way of engagement with everyone, alignment with no one, in what one analyst calls "multi-vector autonomy."

Read more: Times of India (domestic reform agenda), Theprint In (April 8 details), The Annapurna Express (multi-vector autonomy concept), Spotlight Nepal ($1,400→$3,000 target)

Four Hikes in a Month and the Mayor's Carpooling

The cost of fuel hit Rs219 a litre ($1.48) on Friday, the fourth price increase in a month and the highest in South Asia, topping Pakistan's $1.36 and leaving Bangladesh's $0.87 looking like a distant memory. The Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) is still bleeding Rs7.81 billion every fortnight despite the hikes and now owes Indian Oil Corporation nearly Rs18 billion. The state oil company floated an odd-even vehicle rule to save fuel, though the government settled for a two-day weekend instead of the proposed four-day work week. Transport fares are already up 15 to 21 percent, and the NOC's latest statement suggests another 20 to 30 percent price jump could be coming. The Asian Development Bank warned Friday that the West Asia conflict keeps pushing global oil prices higher, with inflation projected to hit 3.7 percent this fiscal year before climbing to 4.5 percent next year.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (regional price comparison), myRepublica

Oli Walks Free After 13 Days

Former prime minister KP Sharma Oli and former home minister Ramesh Lekhak were released Monday after the Supreme Court let their latest detention order expire, ending 13 days behind bars on criminal negligence charges tied to 19 deaths during September's Gen Z protests. The court noted that statements had already been taken and that Oli is seriously ill, but stopped short of calling the detention unlawful. Both men walked on the condition they show up when summoned. Oli claimed vindication on Facebook, calling his arrest "unlawful" and driven by "prejudice and revenge." The case remains open and the court instructed investigators to wrap up quickly.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Buddha's Backyard Gets an Eviction Notice

Nepal's Supreme Court has ordered the demolition of all industrial facilities within 15 kilometres of Lumbini, putting Rs 70 billion ($460 million) in investment and 10,000 jobs on the chopping block to protect the UNESCO World Heritage site where the Buddha was born. The ruling, issued last August but published in full text last Tuesday, targets 40 heavy and medium-scale firms including 11 cement factories in the Lumbini industrial corridor between Bethari and Sundi in Mayadevi Rural Municipality. The case dates to 2019, when senior advocate Prakash Mani Sharma filed a writ arguing that unregulated industrial construction was irreversibly damaging the archaeological integrity and spiritual sanctity of the site. Lumbini pulled in roughly 2.3 million visitors in fiscal year 2024-25: 1.46 million Nepalis, 570,000 Indians, and more than 252,000 from elsewhere.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Beijing Reads Kathmandu the Riot Act

Chinese Ambassador Zhang Maoming sat down with Home Minister Sudan Gurung on Monday and delivered blunt some blunt talking points by telling the Minister to keep government hands off Tibetan and Taiwanese activities. Zhang mentioned the brief appearance of a Taiwanese flag at a March 28 cultural festival in Kathmandu and warned Gurung against sending any official representation to the May 27 swearing-in of Penpa Tsering, the re-elected Sikyong of the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamshala. Tsering won a second five-year term in February with more than 60 percent of the vote. Gurung, who has faced accusations of backing Tibetan refugee youth during last year's Gen Z protests, a charge he has repeatedly denied, assured Beijing that no Nepali soil would be used against China. The ambassador also raised concerns about continued "separatist" activities by Tibetans and the registration status of Tibetan refugees.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

784 Pages of Helicopter Fraud

Prosecutors filed a 784-page charge sheet against the Everest helicopter rescue ring, using organized crime statutes that could multiply prison terms for anyone who knowingly enabled the scam. Field coordinator Vivek Pandey confessed on page 252 that he arranged choppers for tourists with headaches and coordinated with hospitals to fabricate altitude sickness diagnoses, though he's still denying it constituted organized crime. The charges cover five categories of fraud, from forged flight manifests to inflated medical claims that pulled $20 million from insurers between 2022 and 2025. Canada issued a Level 2 travel advisory warning its citizens about pressure tactics, falsified documents, and suspiciously cheap trekking packages.

Read more: Climbing (director implicated), The Travel (traveler protection tips)

Ninety-Four Billion and Counting

Nepalis sent Rs 93.89 billion ($617 million) out of the country for overseas education in the first eight months of this fiscal year, up 8 percent from the same period last year and part of a climb that's been running since the pandemic. The net outflow, after accounting for the Rs 4.10 billion foreign students brought in, hit Rs 89.79 billion. Former National Planning Commission vice-chair Prakash Kumar Shrestha says the government talks about improving education but has no policy to bring graduates back, and schools here don't prioritize foreign degrees even when students do return.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Balen's Bureaucrats Get a Week to Empty In-Trays

The government launched a "Zero Pending Files" drive from April 13 to 20, ordering every public office to clear backlogs and track stalled decisions daily. Files pending beyond three, seven, or 15 days face will get a mandatory review, and officials are being told to stop kicking decisions upstairs unnecessarily. The procurement office also released a draft amendment to the 19-year-old Public Procurement Act on April 8, proposing reverse auctions, forfeiting bank guarantees if contractors pocket advances without starting work within 30 days, and holding project officials personally accountable. The Prime Minister's Office published an 18-point "national commitment" synthesizing the economic plan outlined in Story 3 and requested feedback by April 23. A separate initiative targets reclaiming government land still occupied by party-affiliated trade unions despite a 2022 policy requiring them to pay leases or vacate.

Read more: Khabarhub (income target), The Kathmandu Post (six parties listed), myRepublica (tracking mandate), myRepublica (30-day forfeiture), The Kathmandu Post (monthly lease)

Passport Plus What, Exactly?

The Department of Foreign Employment told migrant workers on April 6 to show up at Tribhuvan International Airport with air tickets, invoices, and receipts for fees paid to manpower agencies. The Department of Immigration said workers need only a passport and labour approval, nothing more. The contradiction revived a turf war that last flared in July 2023, when 138 workers bound for Kuwait were stopped at the airport despite holding valid approvals. Labour expert Rameshwor Nepal called the receipt requirement "immature," noting that under free visa, free ticket programmes in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, the UAE, and Mauritius, workers often don't have receipts to present. The Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies objected that mandating receipts without policy reform would burden workers caught between two agencies that can't agree on paperwork. As of publication, the receipt requirement has not been formally withdrawn, leaving workers to guess which set of rules applies at the gate.

Read more: Online Khabar (criticism), myRepublica (clarification)

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back - hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share Nepal Weekly

Nepal Weekly - 2026-04-08

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 04:21:47 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Tomasz Brengos on Unsplash

Subscribe now

Balen Takes Office, Sends KP Oli to Jail

Balendra Shah's first act as prime minister was to arrest his predecessor. Within hours of taking office, the new PM told police to nab former prime minister KP Sharma Oli and ex-Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak over the September 2025 crackdown that killed at least 76 protesters. The move resulted in street clashes between Oli's supporters and security forces in Kathmandu; Kathmandu District Court gave investigators a five-day remand to question both men, later extended by two more days. Shah, whose Rastriya Swatantra Party came to power on the back of those same protests, had promised accountability during his campaign. Oli's Communist Party of Nepal (UML) raised the arrests in Thursday's first session of the House of Representatives, accusing the government of political persecution.

Read more: The Himalayan Times (protest violence), OCCRP (Bhatta financials), The Himalayan Times (Agrawal arrest), MSN (cabinet makeup)

Everest's $20 Million Baking Soda Scam

Police charged 32 people over a fake helicopter rescue racket that defrauded insurers of at least $19.69 million, a caper that was first exposed in 2018 when a government probe fingered 15 companies involved (no action was taken at the time). The operation operated by way of guides sickening trekkers with baking soda mixed into food or contaminated meals to justify evacuations, then filing multiple insurance claims for single flights and getting hospitals to issue inflated medical invoices. Ten suspects have been arrested, including people from trekking agencies, helicopter companies and hospitals. Investigators found that guides also terrified some tourists that were showing mild symptoms of altitude sickness into unnecessary airlifts.

Read more: Straits Times (AFP confirmation), Asian News Network (financials)

Two-Day Weekend, Zero Choice

Civil servants have been gifted a two-day weekend for the first time, and nobody's celebrating. The government shut down all offices and schools on both Saturdays and Sundays beginning this week, in an emergency fuel conservation measure. Aviation fuel prices nearly doubled on Thursday, and the state-owned Nepal Oil Corporation has been hemorrhaging money on petroleum products even as it’s put price hikes in place. Officials are now exploring ways they might convert petrol and diesel vehicles to electric power. Nepal relies almost entirely on India for fuel supplies, leaving it exposed to both price shocks and Indian decision-making.

Read more: Al Jazeera (office hours), MSN (EV conversion)

Taxes Cut, Oil Corp Still Bleeding

Nepal Oil Corporation has lost Rs 11.72 billion ($77 million) in just 15 days, caught between rising international prices and frozen retail rates. The Cabinet has, in an attempt to stem the bleeding, cut customs duties on fuel by half, but it may not be enough. Gasoline currently sells at Rs 202 per liter, but NOC's import cost of Rs 154 plus Rs 66 in taxes pushes the cost to Rs 220, leaving a per-liter subsidy loss of Rs 18. The Diesel story is even worse, it has a Rs 121/ liter loss at current retail prices.

Read more: Spotlight Nepal (tax figures), The Annapurna Express (customs cut)

Balen's Broom Sweeps 167 Points Off the Board

The NEPSE shed 167 points in the days after PM Balen Shah's government took office, a 5.7% slide that’s been a real-time barometer of investor anxiety. Markets dipped 71 points on the first trading day, then oscillated through a few brief recoveries before continuing the descent as the administration showed an appetite for enforcement.

Read more: The Himalayan Times (market), The Annapurna Express (example)

Half a Billion in Broken Glass

The National Planning Commission put a price tag on last year's Gen Z protests, and it’s Rs 84.45 billion ($555 million). The damage was widespread, across government offices, private businesses, community assets, and torched vehicles. The private sector took a Rs 33.54 billion ($221 million) hit, and the government and public sector losses ran to Rs 44.93 billion ($296 million). Rebuilding is expected to cost Rs 36.30 billion ($239 million) over the next two and a half years.

Big Spenders Stay Home

Nepal welcomed 120,516 tourists in March, a similar number to the same month last year, but the headline number is hiding a retreat of high-value visitors. American arrivals were down 28%, European visitors fell 19%, and UK numbers slid from about 6k to a little less than 5,000. A 21% increase from India and other SAARC countries papered over the gap, even though spring is normally when Western climbers and trekkers fill the lodges. Nepal Tourism Board CEO Deepak Raj Joshi is blaming the West Asia conflict for disrupting transit routes (he was personally stranded at Doha airport for a week).

Read more: Online Khabar

Three-Quarters Electric and Rising

Electric vehicles made up nearly three-quarters of new car sales according to fiscal year 2025 customs data, one of the world's highest adoption rates, and some drivers are giving thanks as diesel prices go through the roof. Gyanu Pattel, who swapped his Tata Sumo for a 10-seater electric van a year ago, now spends $9 daily on charging for his 140km Birgunj-Kathmandu shuttle, down from the $45 he was paying for diesel. The tailwind is significant because Nepal is able to generates electricity from its own rivers instead of importing fossil fuels. Charging stations have sprung up across the country since about 2020, and electric minivan drivers have become more willing to drive with empty seats since fuel costs aren't eating their margins, meaning unexpected efficiencies are being found in shorter wait time and roomier rides for passengers.

Kathmandu Forms Committee Number 1,001 to Fix Power Bottleneck

Speaking of hydropower… The government set up a committee to figuring out why 13,000 MW of private hydropower projects are stuck waiting for Power Purchase Agreements, in a backlog that's been frustrating developers for years. The panel, is expected to find bottlenecks in the PPA process and recommend reforms.

Cull and Kill

Bird flu was reported in 23 locations in five districts, forcing authorities to destroy 104,000 fowl and ban the poultry trade in the eastern belt. Sunsari had a dozen outbreaks, Morang seven, with cases also turning up in Jhapa, Chitwan, and Kathmandu, where a crow tested positive on the Tribhuvan University campus. The eastern belt is responsible for a significant share of national poultry production; the trade ban is already pushing prices higher in city markets.

Read more: Online Khabar

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back - hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share Nepal Weekly

Nepal Weekly - 2026-04-01

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:24:13 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Sudip Shrestha on Unsplash

Subscribe now

First Majority in 27 Years

Nepal got its youngest prime minister on Friday when 35-year-old Balendra Shah took the oath of office. The former structural engineer and (**check notes**) rap artist leads the Rastriya Swatantra Party, which won 182 of 275 parliamentary seats in the March 5 election, the first single-party majority in 27 years. Shah, who served as Kathmandu mayor from 2022 to 2026 before stepping down to run, defeated former prime minister KP Sharma Oli by large margin in his own Jhapa constituency. His 15 member cabinet was also announced; it includes five women and shows a technocratic tilt. Deputy prime minister and finance minister Swarnim Wagle holds a master’s degree from Harvard, health minister Nisha Mehta is a nurse, for example. Shah kept the defence and industry portfolios for himself. The first cabinet meeting approved a 100-decision governance blueprint covering a wide range of issue. Details in the Katmandu Post, below.

Read more: AP News (protest context), The Kathmandu Post (constitutional process), The Himalayan Times (Vedic traditions), NDTV (Modi congratulates, seats), The Kathmandu Post (blueprint)

Rapper With New Job Arrests His Predecessor

Police arrested former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and ex-Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak early Saturday morning, less than 24 hours after Balendra Shah took oath as a Prime Minister of Nepal. The arrests are based on the commission report that found 76 people died during the September protests, with at least 19 killed on the first day when police fired on demonstrators protesting for anti corruption movement. The commission, was led by former justice Gauri Bahadur Karki, concluded Oli and Lekhak showed "extreme negligence" and made "no effort to stop or control the firing," though it couldn't establish a direct shoot order was given. New Home Minister Sudan Gurung wrote on social media: "No one is above the law. This is not revenge against anyone, just the beginning of justice.", but CPN-UML Secretary Mahesh Basnet says selective arrests tied to the Karki Commission report could push the country back into conflict, calling the government’s approach “controversial and conspiratorial.” Also see the next story.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (warrant legality challenge), Christian Daily (protest clash details), Independent (sentencing specifics), BBC (Oli medical condition), myRepublica (court appearance timeline), myRepublica (threat of more conflict)

Burnt Money Burns Back

The anti-money laundering unit also arrested former energy minister Deepak Khadka Sunday from his residence in Budhanilkantha, months after protesters set his house on fire and videos spread online showing demonstrators tossing cash found inside into the air. After nearly six months of enquiries, the Department of Money Laundering Investigation, has launched the full investigation involving three former prime ministers- Sher Bahadur Deuba, KP Sharma Oli, and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, as well as former minister Arzu Rana Deuba. Burnt pieces of banknote recovered from several leaders’ home after the September 9, 2025, vandalism were confirmed to be genuine by lab tests. Khadka’s detention came just a day after Oli and former home minister Ramesh Lekhak were arrested.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (first PM probe), DW (protest death toll)

Infinity and Beyond the Travel Ban

Money laundering investigators stopped Infinity Holdings chairman Deepak Bhatta from leaving the country, reopening the case that had previously stalled under the previous government. Bhatta, accused of acting as a broker to win government contracts, is under scrutiny over a suspicious Rs 450 million (~$3 million) transfer in 2021 from Jagdamba Steel that never appeared in the company's audit report. The financial trail was flagged by Nepal Rastra Bank's Financial Information Unit in 2022, which noted that the money was moved from Jagdamba Steel's account to one of Bhatta's personal accounts. The investigation has grown to include the Deuba family, with police stopping demolition work at Deuba's Budhanilkantha residence to preserve evidence.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post (Budhi Gandaki contract), Online Khabar (Rana connections)

The House Now Loses

The telecoms regulator blocked all online betting apps and websites within 24 hours on Sunday, after an order from the communications ministry. The ban is similar to a crackdown that took place in India last year. All gambling is already supposed to be illegal, but there is concern about the rise in online betting among young users.

Tokyo Built It, Beijing Will Run It

The Nagdhunga Tunnel, funded with a Rs 16 billion ($105 million) Japanese concessional loan is still unopened almost a year after construction was more-or-less finished, but is expected to open soon under Chinese operation. A joint venture between China's Yusin and local firm ART won a five-year contract with bid of Rs 1.10 billion ($7.2 million), beating six other bidders. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) had cautioned against choosing a Chinese firm, but Nepali procurement rules award to the lowest bidder. Trial runs are expected by early May, with full operations likely within three months, around mid-June. About 150 staff still need to be hired and trained before the tunnel, which will shortened the 7.5 km stretch from Balambu to Sisne Khola to 5 km, opens to traffic.

Read more: myRepublica (JICA objection), The Kathmandu Post (details)

Governance by Queue

Nepal's new ministers are finding that running the government means they need to meet with people before they even get to their desks. The Rastriya Swatantra Party assigned teams to each of its 22 ministries for "policy support and oversight," keeping ministers in all-day briefings. Gen Z activist groups are apparently showing up in packs of 30 demanding immediate accountability. A joint secretary at one ministry said ministers are "exhausted" after talking to groups who refuse to leave. The government's solution is reportedly a proposed Gen Z Council to channel youth demands away from ministry waiting rooms.

Read more: Ratopati (Gen Z Council), myRepublica (Thursday session)

Token System Dies, More Reform TBD

The Labour Ministry brought an end to its token system for migrant worker permits on Sunday, making a change to same-day approvals instead. This improvement is part of the reform the Cabinet approved on March 27. Other reforms include getting prospective migrant workers enrolled in the contribution-based social security system, making pre-departure orientation training available online through audio-visual formats, and getting bilateral labor agreements inked with five more countries.

Read more: The Himalayan Times (private sector partnership), The Himalayan Times (March 31 start)

Red Sunday, Green Light for Margin

Every sector fell as NEPSE lost 71 points Sunday, dropping 2.40 percent to close at 2,879.11 on the first trading day of the week. The sell-off came in a week of political frothiness, including the arrest of Oli , money laundering investigations, and, of course, a new government still finding its footing. Finance names were hit hardest, down 3.37 percent. Rs 15 billion ($99 million) changed hands in 196,158 trades. Of 333 companies traded, 255 declined and only 10 turned green on the session. Nepal Stock Exchange changed the margin trading rules on March 27, and will now allow 60 brokers to offer leveraged credit to investors. The Qualified brokers are permitted to lend up to five times a client’s certified net worth, but any single client can use only 10 percent of a broker’s total margin pool. The introduction of margin trading is likely to amplify market volatility.

Read more: The Himalayan Times (Sunday’s session), myRepublica (margin)

Soybeans Drive Birgunj Boom

Exports through Birgunj customs were up almost a fifth year-over-year in the first seven months of fiscal 2026, with processed soybean oil making up more than half the value at Rs 35.58 billion ($235 million). Fruit juice and sunflower oil were the next largest exports through the country's busiest customs point. Imports also rose 11% over the same period.

Taxman's Share of the Barrel

Nearly half the cost of every barrel of fuel entering Nepal goes to taxes. Customs revenue from fuel imports was Rs 52.15 billion ($344 million) in the first seven months of this fiscal year, a figure that is 42% of the total import bill for fuel. Seems like a lot, and the time might be right for a fuel tax reform.

Read more: myRepublica (breakdown), myRepublica (collection trend)

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back - hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share Nepal Weekly

Nepal Weekly - 2026-03-25

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:07:17 GMT

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Subscribe now

From Rap Bars to Rebar

Balendra Shah, the 35-year-old former rapper who once soundtracked Kathmandu's streets, takes the oath as the country's youngest prime minister on 27th March. His Rastriya Swatantra Party swept 182 of 275 parliamentary seats in the March 5 election, six months after Gen Z protests brought down K.P. Sharma Oli's government over a social media ban that sparked outrage across the country. Shah defeated Oli in the veteran's home turf of Jhapa-5, winning by nearly 50,000 votes. It's a remarkable rise for a structural engineer turned mayor turned national leader, carried by a wave of youth anger over corruption and a political class that kept recycling the same septuagenarians through the PM's office. The harder part starts now. Shah inherits an economy that heavily reliant on remittances with youth unemployment pushing millions abroad. He has promised visible anti-corruption measures, but whether the administrator who cleared Kathmandu's streets can navigate national politics remains very much an open question.

Read more: The Week (youth MP stats), The Himalayan Times (oath timeline), CIVICUS Lens (protest background), Gulf News (election results), Deccan Herald (geopolitical implications)

New Broom's Old Baggage Lands in Court

The Supreme Court of Nepal is hearing a challenge to the Attorney General's decision to drop organized crime and money laundering charges against RSP chair Rabi Lamichhane, who faces fraud allegations tied to 1.51 billion rupees (about $10 million) allegedly taken from cooperatives. Justices Binod Sharma and Abdul Aziz Musalman will resume the hearing on Thursday after advocates filed writs against Attorney General Sabita Bhandari Baral's January decision to withdraw the charges. The case has already shifted twice. Baral first amended only Lamichhane's charge sheet, then extended the amnesty to all co-defendants two days later. Lamichhane, who is out on 6.5 million rupees ($43,000) bail, no longer has to appear monthly at Kaski District Court. The timing is awkward for a party on the verge of leading the incoming government.

Read more: Khabarhub (justices named), Ratopati (bail details), myRepublica (charge sheet amendment)

Baking Soda and Helicopter Bills

Prosecutors charged 32 people on Sunday in a scheme which trekking agencies, helicopter operators, and hospitals allegedly poisoned tourists with baking soda to fake altitude sickness, then billed insurers $19.69 million for phantom evacuations. Guides reportedly laced food to make trekkers violently ill, forced them onto helicopters, then forged medical and flight documents to split the insurance payouts with cooperating hospitals. But the alleged mastermind, Rajendra Bahadur Singh of Mountain Helicopter, was not charged. The District Attorney's Office said there was "no evidence" linking him to the crimes, even though police had identified him as the ringleader. The investigation report sat at the Attorney's Office for a week amid what critics describe as external pressure. Major international insurers including Travellers Assists have already stopped selling policies for Nepal.

Read more: OCCRP (dollar amounts), Ratopati (mastermind not charged), myRepublica (six-year history)

India and China Reopen a Pass Nepal Says Is Theirs

India and China are moving to restart border trade through the Lipulekh Pass this year after a six-year break, and Kathmandu isn't happy about it. The pass sits in territory Nepal claims as its own, a dispute that was formalized when K.P. Oli's government released new political map in 2020 and later amended the constitution to include Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh, and Kalapani. Indian officials in Uttarakhand say preparations are underway for the annual June-to-September trading season, following clearance from New Delhi. RSP has strongly condemned the India-China move last year, calling Lipulekh sovereign Nepali territory under the 1816 Sugauli Treaty. The pass remains under Indian control, and the incoming government will have to figure out how to square its campaign rhetoric with diplomatic reality.

Read more: myRepublica (RSP diplomatic pressure), The Kathmandu Post (district official confirmation)

Iran War Cooks the Economy

Middle East tensions are hitting Nepal through four channels at once - fuel shortages, stranded migrant workers, disrupted tourism flights, and rising cooking gas prices. The most visible shift is happening in kitchens. Importers brought in nearly 148,000 electric stoves in the first eight months of this fiscal year, a jump of more than 50%, as consumers scramble to replace scarce LPG. The government is considering an odd-even vehicle rationing system to cut fuel consumption, though no decision has been made. Crude oil is hovering at $102 a barrel. Hotels and restaurants are feeling the squeeze the most, burning through roughly a third of the country's 45,000-tonne monthly LPG demand. The Hotel Association is pushing for concessional electricity rates of around Rs 6-7 per unit ($0.04-0.05) down from the current Rs 15 ($0.10).

Read more: Nikkei Asia (stranded workers), Desh Sanchar (import figures), Spotlight Nepal (rationing plan), The Kathmandu Post (hotel sector)

Kathmandu's Bourse Bets Big on Balen

The stock exchange rose almost 80 points, about 2.8%, over two sessions last week as investors piled back in after the election. The rally follows after a brutal stretch for government coffers. Capital gains tax collections fell by almost half to Rs 6.44 billion ($43 million) over the first eight months of this fiscal year, with trading volumes down nearly 30% as political uncertainty kept money on the sidelines. Microfinance stocks led the post-election bounce with a 4.2% gain, and turnover hit Rs 23.59 billion ($157 million) in Sunday's session alone. The market is betting on Balen, but capital gains tax is still running at about half of last year's total. there is a Lot of ground to recover.

Read more: The Himalayan Times (Sunday session), The Annapurna Express (Tuesday close), myRepublica (tax figures)

Graduating to Harder Terms

Exiting Least Developed Country status could cost 132,000 jobs and $1 billion in lost trade preferences. The strain is already showing at the Nepalgunj Customs Office, a key crossing point with India which has collected just 52% of its Rs 24.54 billion ($163 million) revenue target by mid-March. That leaves nearly half the target to be met in just the final four months of the fiscal year. Revenue has fallen short of its monthly target every single month, ranging between 69% and 88% of what was expected. The Integrated Check Post at Jamunaha was expected to ease this situation by boosting cross-border trade, but it hasn’t delivered the desired result. The previous fiscal year ended at just 75% of target, and the year before that at 63%.

Read more: myRepublica (monthly revenue)

The Grand Old Party Won't Let Its Leader Quit

Nepali Congress rejected president Gagan Kumar Thapa's resignation on Sunday after the party won only 38 seats in the March 5 election, its weakest performance in history. Thapa, who had taken over at a special convention in January and lost his own Sarlahi seat, stepped down on moral grounds on Thursday. However, the central working committee unanimously decide to retain him, pointing instead to "structural problems and uncontrollable external factors" rather than leadership failure. The committee also prepared a 27-point review that highlighted issues ranging from deep internal factionalism to what it described as "algorithmic influences in the digital age." One of the most striking finding suggested that some NC members practiced "silent killing" by choosing not to campaign for party candidates. Meanwhile, the Deuba faction, which has left out of the new central committee, has decided to continue its own parallel activities within the party.

Read more: myRepublica (13-page report), The Rising Nepal (rejection), The Kathmandu Post (Deuba faction)

First Trans Lawmaker Takes Her Seat

Bhumika Shrestha, 37, has made history as the country's first transgender lawmaker after RSP appointed her to a proportional representation seat in the 275-member House of Representatives. The Kathmandu based activist told AFP she feels "very excited but also the responsibility on my shoulders," and said she hopes to work toward strengthening constitutional protections for gender and sexual minorities.

Read more: DW, MSN (activism background)

Asia's Water Tower Is Melting Twice as Fast

Himalayan glaciers are losing 73 centimeters of ice each year, nearly double the 34 centimeters before 2000, according to two studies released Saturday by ICIMOD. In the Hindu Kush region, glaciers have lost as 27 meters of thickness since 1975, and around 12% of their area has disappear between 1990 and 2020. These glaciers are crucial water source, feeding at least 10 major Asian river systems that supports roughly two billion people. However, about a third of the remaining ice lies in areas that are especially vulnerable to rapid warming, raising concerns about the pace of future loss.

Read more: myRepublica (black carbon emissions), The Kathmandu Post (glacial lake floods)

Big Brands Queue at a Slow IP Court

The Department of Industry issued notices on Wednesday to 11 companies accused of copying trademark of global brands like Coca-Cola, Hugo Boss, Trek Bicycles, and New Zealand's Kathmandu Limited. The cases includes a snack company Chitwan accused of copying a Turner Entertainment logo, and a fashion business in Jhapa selling "Bass"-branded products that Hugo Boss says are too similar to its own. These are just small part of a large number of cases. Some complains from Coca-Cola's have been pending for years. The director general handles both administrative work and legal cases, and the backlog continues to grow.

Read more: The Kathmandu Post

Immigration Drops the Buddy System for Treks

Solo trekkers can now visit restricted Himalayan areas like Upper Mustang and Nar-Phu, as long as they hire a licensed guide through a registered agency. The Department of Immigration has removed the old rule that required at least two-person, after tourism operators said it often forced travellers to be paired with strangers. The new rules also limits each guides to a maximum of seven clients.

Read more: myRepublica (visitor stats), India Times (digital permit system)

Apples to Apples, the Border Doesn't Hold

Indian border forces seized 3,515 kg of Chinese apples and two Mahindra pickups at the Hanumannagar crossing. This shows a larger smuggling problems, with goods worth millions of rupees (tens of thousands of dollars) moving daily through nine border points in Sarlahi district. Locals says smuggling is busiest at night and early morning, when goods move freely between Sangrampur, Narayanpur, Malangwa, and six other crossings that seem to operate with flexible hours. The seizure was carried out by the Indian authorities, not the Nepali officials.

Read more: Ratopati

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back - hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share Singapore Weekly

Disclaimer

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 06:59:47 GMT

Nepal Weekly, a Gotoh Industries LLC newsletter, is meant for informational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment, legal, or other advice. Please consult with your investment, tax, or legal advisor before making any investment or business decisions.

Information is presented on a best-effort basis, and while we strive for accuracy and integrity in all that we do, errors may be made from time to time. Please review our correction policy for further information.

Updated: 20260306

Advertising Policy

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 06:59:46 GMT

Advertising and sponsorship do not influence editorial decisions or content.

We believe that honesty is the best policy and will always give our honest, truthful opinions and experiences to provide our readers with accurate content. Third party advertisements and links to other sites where products or services are advertised are not endorsements by Nepal Weekly. Advertisers have no influence over editorial coverage or content decisions.

Sponsored content, when published, will always be clearly labeled as such.

Nepal Weekly is published by Gotoh Industries, LLC.

Updated 20260306

Privacy Policy

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 06:59:46 GMT

As Nepal Weekly is currently published on the Substack platform, if you have questions about how your personal information is handled, you should review the Substack privacy policy. A link to the latest Substack privacy policy is always available at the bottom of the Nepal Weekly homepage.

Nepal Weekly is published by Gotoh Industries, LLC, a company incorporated in the United States of America. Your personal information is not collected, processed, used or retained by Gotoh Industries beyond what is explained in the Substack privacy policy.

Most importantly, rest assured that your email address will not be sold, transferred, or communicated to any other party unless required by law, and all requests to unsubscribe from Nepal Weekly will be honored.

Updated 20260306

Correction Policy

August Whitcraft — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 06:58:34 GMT

Nepal Weekly strives for accuracy, honesty and integrity.

All Nepal Weekly staff are required to review a code of ethics and confirm that they understand their obligations to the truth.

Occasionally, minor edits may be made to articles after initial publishing in order to fix grammar, spelling, typographical, or similar mistakes that do not affect the meaning of any article or story. In such case edits will be made without announcement. From time to time, however, we may get something wrong, and our commitment to readers is that we will immediately admit the mistake, correct it, and provide the details of what mistakes were made.

We also have written policies for our procedures and one of the procedures in the event of an error is to go back and refine our procedures to make a best effort to ensure the same or a similar mistake cannot be made again.

Material that was lawful at the time of its original publication does not become improper with the passage of time. Nepal Weekly cannot be held liable for a failure to update past articles.

If you believe you have found an error that requires correction, or you have suggestions about how we can improve this policy, please email us at nepalweekly@substack.com.

Updated 20260306

Coming soon

Derek van Pelt — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:58:52 GMT

This is Nepal Weekly.

Subscribe now

Nepal Weekly

Nepal Weekly - 2026-06-10

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Delhi This Week, Beijing Next

Hundi's Days Are Numbered

Reopening the Palace Massacre File

Advertisement:

EC Wants a Smaller Parliament

Take the Money and Run

Reasons to Leak a Budget

Fifteen Days Was Always a Lie

Congress Can't Find Its Members

Uber Rolls In

Two Flags Battle for a Single Generation

Nepal Weekly - 2026-06-03

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Big Numbers and Small Print

Balen Drags Britain Into Border Row

Rights Body Names Oli, Fingers Lamichhane

Advertisement:

Mayor-Turned-PM Gives Himself 48 Jobs

Washington's Charm Offensive Meets Kathmandu's Local-Ownership Rule

Big Budgets Hampered by Empty Wallets

Schools, Hospitals and Hot Plates Get the Bill

100% Gender-Responsive 0% Checked

Beijing Sets Quota While Kailash Sets Demand

Shenzhen Gets a Direct Line to Kathmandu

Dial-Up Divestment

Nepal Weekly - 2026-05-27

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

One House, Two-Thirds, No Senate

Balen Skips Question Hour

Wrong Court, Your Honour

Advertisement:

Lamichhane's Charge Sheet Goes on a Diet

Delhi Skips PM, Rings the Chairman

Oli's Deputies Show Him the Door

Three More Years in the Poor Kids' Club

Desert Mirage Sends 80,000 Nepalis Home

Monsoon Bill Comes Due Early

Measles Spreads as Vaccine Stocks Run Dry

Rush Hour at 8,848 Metres

Seized Collateral, Squeezed Cash

Nepal Weekly - 2026-05-20

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Fourth in Seniority, First in the Robes

Four Months to Dodge the Black List

Billions Parked but Records Conveniently Missing

Advertisement:

Auditors Found What Auditors Find

Win an Election Then We'll Talk

Chinese Drones Fly While American Drones Wait

Congress Plans Its Own Republic Day

Satellite Sees Drought, Cuts Check

Spilled Watts Mean a Cooked Dinner

Nepal Weekly - 2026-05-13

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Seven Percent Growth Plan Inspires a Walkout

Balen's Blitz Meets the Bench

Reserves Pile Up, Nobody's Borrowing

Advertisement:

Meta's Billions Exist Only in the Press Release

Delhi Bails Out Paddy Season

Social Media Pays

Export the Beans, Import the Powder

Russia's 13-Project Offer Gathers Dust at Singha Durbar

A $4,000 Surcharge That Hasn’t Stung

Smart Cell's Carcass Draws a Crowd

Nepal Weekly - 2026-05-06

Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.

Two Neighbors on One Pass

Bulldozers First and Questions Later

Six Thousand Rupees and a Prayer

Advertisement:

Sixty Thousand Souls Hit the Exit

Ordnances Coming and Going

Holding Center On The Flood Plain

Widows Win Back Inheritance

Carrier Redraws South Asia

Rules for Thee, Not for State-Owned Me