Nepal Weekly - 2026-04-22
Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.
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)
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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.
Read more: East Asia Forum
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.
Read more: The Koala News
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.
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