--By Dr Roop Jyoti

 

Being a landlocked country, it is quite tough for Nepal to compete with other countries in industrial development, production and export. Therefore, the country must focus on the development and expansion of its service industries which are supported by and suitable to its geography. However, the irony is only tourism has been considered to be a service industry so far. There is no doubt that tourism has great scope in Nepal. But there are few other sectors which should be developed as important segments of Nepal’s service industry. 

 

Health is one such sector. Nepal has many qualified doctors who have studied at reputed national and foreign medical colleges and universities. Many of them have the experience of working abroad as well. Comparatively, hospitals and other medical institutions can be run at a much lower cost in Nepal than in other countries. The treatment cost at such hospitals, too, would be low. Also, Nepal’s geography and climate are very suitable for such projects. Beautiful sceneries of mountains, lakes or green pastures of land will greet the eyes of those who will look outside the windows of the hospitals. This will give a lot of psychological and mental relief to the patients and encourage their families to spend some time here. Thus, it goes without saying that good hospitals which provide quality health services have a great scope in Nepal.

 

However, so far the state has not even thought about developing the health sector as an industry. Health centres and health posts have been established even in the far-flung villages but they lack skilled and well-trained human resource. Government hospitals are in a mess. However, there are a few well-equipped hospitals, thanks to the entry of the private sector in the health and medical care service. It is because of the presence of such private hospitals that the expats living in Nepal now don’t have to rush to Bangkok or Singapore even for delivery cases! 

 

We can take Grande International Hospital as an example. Established recently, this hospital today serves not only Nepalis and the expat community living in Nepal but also foreigners who come here for treatment. This is because of the hospital’s reasonable charges and quality service. This shows that a lot of foreigners will come to the Nepal for treatment if we can provide health services of international standard. On the other hand, Nepalis too won’t have to go abroad for treatment. This will also boost our in-bound tourism.

 

If we can establish medical colleges and universities of international standard, Nepalis won’t have to go abroad to study medical science; instead foreign students will come here to study medical science. A number of foreign students are already coming to Nepal to study engineering and medical sciences. The reasons for this are Nepal’s natural beauty and excellent climate, availability of enough patients for practical study and low cost of studies. Thus we can see that Nepal has great prospects as an international educational hub. For this to happen, if world-famous universities such as Cambridge and Harvard want to open their campuses in Nepal, they should be allowed to do so. This will provide opportunities to the Nepali students as well. The government has already taken a step towards this direction by allowing the Thailand-based Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) to open a satellite campus in Nepal. It’s time for the government to devise a policy to address such issues in order to make Nepal an international educational hub. This will help strengthen the country’s economy.

 

The government’s focus must shift to employment creation. Supermarkets could be another sector for employment creation. As we are a small economy, our domestic production is low and we have to depend on import for the supply of most of the essential commodities we need. This is a bitter truth. So, we should relax our import policy and lower the customs duty on import to a minimum five percent. Such a relaxation in the import policy would help the country develop into a supermarket hub. The cost of labour and rent of shopping malls has been on a constant rise in global shopping hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong. We should be able to benefit from this situation because of cheap labour, low import tariff and lower rents of shopping malls. We must build and develop supermarkets where goods from around the world are available at reasonable prices. The implementation of this concept would help strengthen our economy by attracting shopping tourism.

 

Old age homes could be another pillar of our service industry. In the developed countries, parents and children start living separately once the latter start earning. As children do not have enough time for their old parents, the latter have to spend the rest of their lives in old age homes in the developed countries. The cost of personal care to such old people and rent of old age homes are higher in the developed world. Nepal’s natural beauty and good weather conditions and the world famous Nepali hospitality are some of the major plus points in establishing old age homes here. Many foreign nationals, who have reached the fag end of their lives, are already living in Nepal. Thus, well-equipped old age homes could be a very good source of income for Nepal. 

 

However, there are some policy hurdles to move ahead in the above-mentioned service sectors. Foreign universities still face some accreditation related problems in Nepal. There are problems in issuing long-term residential visas to foreigners. These problems should be addressed without compromising our national interests. The process of issuing license to health institutions should be eased; hospitals and doctors should be allowed to use foreign medicines if needed. 

 

(The author is a former Minister of State for Finance. This is a TC translation of an article by the author published on Nov 29 issue of Aarthik Abhiyan daily.)