Nepal business, finance and trade news, every Wednesday.
CIAA Probes Three Ex-PMs' Gatekeepers
The Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority has begun asset probes into the personal secretaries of former prime ministers KP Sharma Oli, Sher Bahadur Deuba and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, after the Department of Money Laundering Investigation kicked the cases upstairs. A team of civil servants and police has written to more than 20 agencies, including Nepal Rastra Bank and land revenue offices, to try and get records on shares, vehicles, land and buildings. Bhanu Deuba has been given a 13-page disclosure form covering bank accounts, loans, foreign travel, family property and company investments. The probe follows last year's Gen Z protests, during which the Deuba couple was assaulted at home and Nepali and foreign currencies were found at their residence before it was set on fire.
Read more: The Kathmandu Post
Pokhara Airport Gets Second International Route
Pokhara tourism operators met UAE Ambassador Abdulla Saeed Mubarak Jarwan Al Shamsi this week to shore up commitments ahead of flydubai’s daily Dubai service, launching September 23 with bookings now open through March 26, next year. It will be the second scheduled international route from an airport that opened three years ago. The first, Himalaya Airlines’ Lhasa service, was launched in March 2025 and has been suspended because of low demand. flydubai connects to more than 250 destinations, and Pokhara Tourism Council’s immediate past president Pom Narayan Shrestha says the meeting was mostly centered on figuring out how to make the route last, since Himalaya Airlines wasn’t able to crack that nut.
Read more: The Rising Nepal
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Kathmandu Chases Council Seat as Rapporteur Waits
Bernard Duhaime, the UN Special Rapporteur on transitional justice, has heard nothing from Kathmandu since he proposed a November 17-27 visit three months ago. The Balendra Shah government cancelled his June trip after sacking the leadership of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons in early May, and it still hasn't started the appointment process to replace them. Normally a job like that (the replacement, that is) takes about six months.
Read more: The Kathmandu Post
Agnipath Talks Resume as India Army Chief Visits
India's new army chief General Dhiraj Seth spent four days in Kathmandu last week, collecting an honorary Nepal Army generalship from President Ramchandra Poudel and paying a courtesy call on the Prime Minister (who also happens to hold the defence portfolio). It was Seth's first foreign visit since taking over in June, and the first private audience Shah has granted a foreign military figure since he took office in March. Agnipath recruitment for Gorkha soldiers, frozen since 2022, was a hot topic, and both sides said they wanted a "collaborative and consultative approach," without explaining what that might entail.
Read more: Hindustan Times
497 Blank Passports Still Missing
A chargesheet meant to settle one case of five Tibetan refugees traveling on Nepali papers has reopened a much bigger can of worms. Three of the documents, serial numbers A-026225 through A-026227, can be connected back to a batch of 500 blank travel documents that (mysteriously?) vanished from the Foreign Ministry's Store Section in 2009. Only three have ever re-surfaced. The Central Bureau of Investigation says it has now opened an investigation into the other 497. Who took them, and where they ended up, is still unknown.
Read more: The Kathmandu Post
Medical Council Hunts Ghost Faculty
The Nepal Medical Council has pulled together a committee to review credentials for the up-to 500 foreign doctors (mostly Indian) registered to teach at private medical colleges, after finding one cleared to work in Nepal was still employed back home. Officials think that colleges fly the doctors in only for Medical Education Commission monitoring visits. Those visits help set the number of how many MBBS seats a college can offer, but the thinking is after the visits the colleges let the doctors return home and students go untaught. Students have complained that listed faculty never show up to teach.
Read more: The Kathmandu Post
Supreme Court Orders Dairy Farmer Payments
The Supreme Court of Nepal has told the government to build a system to guarantee that dairy farmers get paid on time. The order comes as a result of a case in which farmers were (when the case was first filed) owed around Rs7 billion ($46 million). Private companies under the Dairy Industry Association and Nepal Dairy Association made up roughly Rs6 billion ($39.5 million) of that, and the state-run Dairy Development Corporation owed another Rs900 million ($5.9 million). The court found no evidence that tripartite agreements reached in March and June 2024 between government, industry and farmers had regularised the payment cycle or done anything to clear the backlog.
Read more: The Kathmandu Post
Khanal Recasts US Ties Around Capital Over Aid
Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal used a Kathmandu seminar that was intended to celebrate 250 years of US independence to pitch a rewrite of the relationship toward less aid and more capital. He identified three targets, led by American venture funding for Nepali IT talent, joint hydropower and cross-border transmission projects, in addition to diaspora capital and skills flowing back through Nepali-Americans in the US. No dollar figures, project list, or American counterpart response came with his speech. The pitch comes as Nepal gets prepared to graduate from Least Developed Country status.
Read more: Radionepalonline
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