Shabda Gyawali's Blog

Another type of foreign investment ………………….. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can bring great advantage to the host country. It fuels economic growth, help reduce poverty, create employment opportunities and assist building physical infrastructures. With the same intention, the Government has decided to observe 2012-2013 as Nepal Investment Year and has setup Nepal Investment Board to spur and facilitate foreign investments in the country. To attract foreign investments, NIB is launching promotional events like road shows in countries like India, UK and USA. NIB is targeting foreign firms that have the resources to investment in mega projects in sectors like energy, tourism, infrastructure development and commercial agriculture. Dr.BRB led cabinet has also passed Investment Board Act ,which ensures to facilitate investment above RS 25 billion through single window policy. A population of 28 million, rising per capita income (mainly due to remittances), demographic dividend, under...

 Nepal- India Agreement " There has been a lot of buzz about Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) signed on October 21, 2011 between Nepal and India.  " What is BIPPA "  BIPPA is a legal instrument that establishes specific rights and obligations to meet the primary purpose of protecting foreign investments against discriminatory measures (i.e. policy inconsistencies) by the host state. To ensure protection and promotion of investments, and to encourage capital flows along with the commitment to credible liberal economic policies, countries typically enter into investment protection agreements like BIPPA. In principle, it ensures reciprocal encouragement, promotion and protection of investments, thus enabling conditions conducive to increase investment ." Click here  Consequences of  BIPPA - " Irate international  investors  in  telecom companies, whose mobile phone permits were cancelled by the  Supre...

For the past couple of weeks,I have been helping an impact investing fund to write its investment prospectus.I have been doing quit a lot of research on the  potential of  Nepali bottom of the pyramid market  particularly in the sectors like internet connectivity,healthcare,water and sanitation, culture ,education and  education ....... Despite lot of potential,current market is very fragmented and due to the difficultly  of geographic  terrains, managing distributions channels is  challenging .... It is  inevitable for both  domestic and international investors  to  be successfully in Nepal without addressing the  hurdles like achieving economies of scale, weak distributions channels,consistent quality of the product and weak infrastructure   like roads,energy,internet .... to add to that  very idea of entrepren...

" Indian hospitality chain Oberoi Hotels Pvt Ltd has sold its entire 6.84 per cent stake in Nepal’s Soaltee Hotel Ltd to Sibkrim Land and Industrial Company Pvt Ltd, for a consideration of $1.68 million, the company has said in a statement. A total of 14,924,063 shares owned by Oberoi Hotels were transferred at Rs 140 per unit. Khaitan & Co LLP was the official advisor for Oberoi Hotels. While Soaltee Enterprises owns the largest stake in Soaltee Hotel, Nepal Airlines Corporation holds 12 per cent stake and Holiday Inn Investment Nepal, a subsidiary of Holiday Inn, has around 10 per cent stake. Soaltee posted a profit of around Rs 110 million during FY2010-2011 and currently employees 700 people."  Source : Vccircle.com

Kudos to Mr. Radesh Pant for accepting the career denting challenge of heading the Nepal Investment Board (NIB). I hope under his leadership,NIB will lure in lots of much needed FDI in the country. Mr Pant knows it well that he is going to face significant domestic challenges like militant labour, extortion, local opposition, arbitrary government policies, red tape, corruption, power cuts, bandas etc . I am confident that he and his team is competent enough to acclimatize/ face these never ending domestic challenges .In my opinion, in the coming year,the bigger concern for NIB will be the uncertainly in the global macro economic situation.......................... "According to a 2010 Central Bureau of Statistics survey, there were 1,897 firms operating with foreign investment from 139 countries. India had the largest investment in Nepal with 393 companies, followed by China with 179, Japan 132, South Korea 94, UK 94, Germany 61 and Switzerland 27." click here to read more N...

just wanted to share these two facts,which I thought was interesting ............................... responsAbility Social Investments AG,one of the world's leading asset managers for social investments that specializes in sectors such as microfinance, SME financing, fair trade and independent media, has invested in Nepal ........ responsAbility has invested in Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF). MDLF gives independent media loan and equity support to media organization in countries where freedom of press is weak. In 2010 ,MDLF provided new funding for two media companies in Nepal − the Jagadamba Press newspaper and the Communication Corner radio broadcaster .......... click here to read more CDC Group plc (‘CDC’), the UK’s development finance institution (DFI), announced a new US$50 million investment in the first-ever equity investment fund to focus on the very poorest parts of India. CDC is an anchor investor in the Pragati Venture and Incubator Fund (‘Pragati’) and has ...

http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/19-general/10804-saudi-prince-meets-president-expresses-interest-to-invest.html