Youth Self-Employment Programme- A classical case of financial inclusion failure......

Since the inception of the Youth Self-Employment Programme,"consultants" have charged development organizations thousands of dollars to conduct diagnosis and give a third party accreditation to the program. The glossy annual reports of various development organizations proudly claims that -Youth Self-Employment Programme is the solution to ignite entrepreneurial cultural and generate self employed jobs for the youths in the country.

Despite of the lofty claims,the "real" performance of the program has been extremely unsatisfactory - " Although the government targeted to employ 50,000 individuals through the Youth Self-Employment Programme (YSEP) this fiscal year, the progress so far has been disappointing, with just 1,842 employed. " ( Kathmandu Post, Dec 20)

SO what Sucks? What is not working ?

" The fund has so far provided bulk loans worth Rs 330 million through 28 Banking and Financial Institutions and cooperatives out of its total approval of Rs 1.75 billion. With lent amount, it was expected that a total of 22,827 individuals would be employed." click here to read more

Bank are reluctant to lend because of the following reasons -

1. Lack of proper government enforcement
2. High transaction and due diligence cost
3. High Risk ( political pressure to write off the loan )