Nepal Prime Minister Balendra ‘Balen’ Shah’s first foreign visit after taking office will be to India, and the government hopes to schedule it before the end of the year, Nepal’s Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle said on Thursday.
Speaking at NDTV’s Anviksha summit in Kathmandu, Wagle said the dates were still being worked out but that the destination was not in doubt.
“After that, we’ve begun to discuss the Prime Minister’s visits abroad.
I am pretty confident that his first visit abroad will be to India, and the dates will need to be worked out, but I am very hopeful that this will happen before the end of the year,” Wagle said.
And if today [Wagle] has firmly stated that the first visit of the honourable Prime Minister Balen Shah will be to India, that shows the way as to what is going to be the relationship – that’s quite remarkable,” Prasad said. India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was in the audience, called the announcement significant. “The whole foundation of Nepal-India relations is so strong. You cannot segregate them through passports or through geographical boundaries… “We’ve started by cleaning up the mess, really. He listed five growth engines the government has identified, listing clean energy, tourism, revival of manufacturing along the border, high-value agriculture, and digitalisation. “From Unilever to ITC to lots of others, all of them pledged rather informally that they plan to double their investment here. Some were unconditional; others were conditional on reforms that the government plans to undertake. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, also in the audience, asked whether Nepal would be better off without the peg, citing the unpegged Sri Lankan rupee. “Foundations have to be built. Wagle insisted that Shah is cautious about the legality of his actions at all times. “There is a caricature of him that, ‘Oh, maybe he wants his own way to prevail. But one thing I must share with this audience. He’s always asking, ‘What does the law say? That was a surprise to me.
Wagle said his country’s budget proposed amending 27 acts on contracts, private property, and parity between domestic, diaspora and foreign investors. We’re talking about five, 10, or 15 years down the road… Right now, we are too dependent on India; 70% of our trade is with India.
The incentives were perverted; the institutions, the rules of the game, were really rigged,” he said. Wagle said he had met Nepal’s largest taxpayers, many of them Indian-owned, two weeks ago. Wagle said devaluation would not help Nepal at present. Asked to describe PM Balen Shah, Wagle said he is the world’s youngest serving head of government, and governs differently from his predecessors, though facing a “paradox” after a stint as mayor of Kathmandu.”He is now presiding over the poorest government in Asia, but he ran the richest city in Nepal,” Wagle said. He said he had teased Shah with Henry Kissinger’s line from the Nixon administration: “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little while.”
