Nepal Weekly - 2026-04-29
Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.
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)
Advertisement:
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.
Read more: Nepali Times
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.
Read more: Nepali Times
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.
Read more: Nepal News
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.
If you value Nepal Weekly, please consider buying (or gifting!) a paid subscription, sharing it on social media or forwarding this email to someone who might enjoy it. Please also “like” this newsletter by clicking the ❤️ below (or sometimes above, depending on the platform), which helps us get visibility on the Substack network.