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Virendra Sharma is a member of the UK Parliament from the Labour Party. He has been holding this position since 2007. He has also been following Nepal for 40 years, and has always stood in favor of enhancing the Nepal-UK ties. Kamal Dev Bhattarai of ApEx talked to him during his recent visit to Kathmandu. Excerpts: How do you view the current state of bilateral relationship between UK and Nepal? The bilateral relationship is healthy, parties in both countries genuinely want to further nurture this relationship. Britain wants to assist in the infrastructure of this country. British people have a lot of respect for Nepali people. And that respect shows that there is a good relationship between Nepal and the United Kingdom. The key pillars of our bilateral relations are culture, trade and investment. Nepal should say what kind of assistance it needs from the UK. We have a lot of potential in bilateral relations, which has not been fully utilized. How could the situation be improved? It is for both parties to react. When you are negotiating, if one party is less demanding, the other party is less responding. I believe that both countries need to identify the potential in society which benefits not only the individuals but wide communities in the world. What is the current state of trade and investment between the two countries and how can it be enhanced?   First, a lot of people want to invest in and visit Nepal. Investment and tourism are two major areas Nepal needs to look at. Nepal needs to create that environment where people feel comfortable to come, feel safe to come, with the knowledge that their investment is safe and their life is safe. It is a responsibility of the Nepal government and Nepali people. In the same way, when Nepali people go overseas, including in Britain, they will look for the same facilities. It is the responsibility of the Nepal government to look at it seriously, so that we can enhance tourism and investment here. What are your suggestions to bring more investment from the UK to Nepal? I am not saying it (investment) is not there but perceptions could be wrong.  Nepal needs to identify the areas where it needs investment. Infrastructure, energy, climate change, water saving, natural resources and sharing of knowledge could be some areas. Why aren’t high-level visits taking place between the two countries? I share that concern, and I believe high-level visits create confidence to give momentum to bilateral relations. It is a mutual responsibility of both parties whether Nepal is putting pressure on the UK prime minister and others to come. I am not criticizing anybody but why is it not happening? It is a responsibility of both countries and people like myself to say why they should visit and what benefits it brings to not only the two countries but to the wider society.

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Saturday directed the chiefs of security agencies to pay attention to the security of employees of the banks and financial institutions (BFIs). With cases of BFIs employees getting attacked and manhandled on the rise in recent days as some people have been inciting anti-banking activities,  PM Dahal instructed the security chiefs to arrange proper security for BFIs and their staff. Of late, financial institutions are in the news for the wrong reasons. While there have been protests against microfinance institutions (MFIs) for their alleged cases of exploitation of borrowers, BFIs are also in the line of fire for higher interest rates. The controversial businessman and medical college owner Durga Prasain has  launched a loan waiver campaign and has openly called his followers not to repay their debts and attack BFIs' staff if they come for loan recovery. Addressing a public rally in Jhapa in late February, Prasain called for a smear campaign on the CEOs and employees of BFIs. Subsequently, incidents of physical attacks against the employees of BFIs and MFIs were reported in various parts of the country. The BFIs' staff in Jajarkot, Mawakanpur, Myagdi, Sunsari, Udayapur, Kapilvastu, Rupandehi, and Kaski districts, among others, have been physically attacked and assaulted in past two weeks. This has forced the umbrella organizations of BFIs to issue strongly worded statements in which they have warned that they would be forced to discontinue the banking service if such activities continue. In a joint statement on Friday, the Nepal Bankers’ Association, Development Bankers’ Association of Nepal, Nepal Financial Institutions Association, and Nepal Microfinance Bankers Association said their employees have been physically assaulted, and offices padlocked and ransacked in more than half a dozen districts. Condemning such acts, these associations also called for legal action against those responsible for instigating such attacks, indicating Prasain. They also warned of discontinuing the banking service for the safety of their staff. As Prasain called for a smear campaign against bank employees, bankers said that it has created an environment of fear among the bank employees. A banker said that the bank employees have been terrified by the campaign. “That’s why we had demanded the security be provided to our offices and staff,” said the banker. Confederation of Banks and Financial Institutions Nepal, a grouping of bank promoters also condemned the obstructive activities to provide banking services and asked the government to ensure law and order. According to a senior official of the Home Ministry, after the bankers submitted a memorandum demanding security for their offices and staff, the Ministry issued a circular in the name of District Administration Offices to enhance vigilance and security around the offices of BFIs. But the official also said that only maintaining law and order would not solve the current rage against the banking sector.  “This is the result of the economic problems that the country is going through. So, it is necessary for the Nepal Rastra Bank and other regulatory agencies to address the genuine concerns of the bank customers,” he said. Nepal's economy is facing deeper troubles since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. The country’s economy sank to negative growth of 2.4 percent in the fiscal year 2019/20 because of Covid-related restrictions. Even though there was a slight recovery after the easing of restrictions later on, the economy has been facing a series of problems. In FY 2021/22, problems of depleting foreign exchange reserves, and widening balance of payment (BoP) gave way to a liquidity crunch in the banking sector. As a result, bank loans started to become costlier which affected the borrowers’ repayment capacity badly. “Not only in Nepal, but we have also seen protests across the world against the economic woes,” said the Home Ministry official, adding, “Agencies under the Home Ministry will look to maintain law and order. Since the problem is multifaceted, our efforts alone may not be adequate.” In Sri Lanka, the once powerful ruling Rajapaksha family was removed from power from street protests last year after an economic crisis engulfed the South Asian Island country. Nepal’s economy is also performing badly as both consumer and business demand have dwindled sharply over the past year. As a result, the government’s revenue collection has dropped dramatically, which is being called the lowest in over 50 years, in the current fiscal year and the government is struggling even to manage the budget for recurrent expenditure. “So, it is necessary to address not only the issue of the law and order but also the economic problems plaguing the country,” the Home Ministry official said.  

A Parliamentary Party meeting of the CPN-UML is underway at the Parliament building in New Baneshwor on Monday. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal is seeking a vote of confidence from the Parliament meeting at 1 pm today. The UML has said that it would not give a vote of confidence to PM Dahal. Addressing the meeting, UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli said that a vote of confidence cannot be given to PM Dahal. “We cannot give a vote of confidence to Dahal as we do not have trust in him,” he said.  

After getting hard hit for nearly two years with the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, foreign employment has bounced back strongly. The Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) data shows labor permit approval has surged by 33.51 percent in the first eight months of the fiscal year 2022/23. The department has issued 540,675 labor permits from mid-July to mid-March in this fiscal year compared to 404,963 permits during the same period of the last fiscal year. There has been a huge increment in the new labor permit approval in the current fiscal year. The department has issued 348,285 new approvals in the first eight months of the current fiscal year compared to 226,701 during the same period of the last fiscal year. The departure of Nepali workers for foreign employment started to recover from FY 2021/22 with normalcy resuming in international travel as many countries begin to lift travel restrictions. Similarly, the sharp decline in industrial and business activities causing a reduction in job opportunities in the country has also forced many Nepalis to go abroad for employment. The number of Nepali workers going abroad for foreign employment declined sharply in FY 2019/20 and FY 2020/21 as major labor destination countries enforced lockdowns to control the pandemic as well as restriction on international traveling. When the first wave of Covid-19 hit the labor destinations in March 2020, the government halted labor migration barring Nepalis from flying abroad for work in Gulf countries, Malaysia, and South Korea, among others. The outbound labor migration approval slumped to a new low in FY 2020/21. The country recorded a drop of 54.75 percent in labor permit issuance in 2020/21 compared to 2019/20. While the government approves labor permits for 111 countries that have officially been recognized as labor destinations and allow migrant workers to go there through recruitment agencies, Nepalis have been also allowed to go to other countries after obtaining individual labor approvals. In FY 2022/23, Nepalis migrated to 100 countries with approval from the DoFE. The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) along with the ASEAN country Malaysia host a vast majority of Nepali migrant workers. These seven countries have consistently been providing employment to more than 80 percent of Nepali migrant workers since 2013/14 and have also remained as nations with the highest demand for Nepali workers. In FY 2022/23, Malaysia again became the number 1 labor destination for Nepali migrant workers. The department's data shows 202,674 labor permits have been issued for the east Asian country. The top five labor destinations in this fiscal year are Malaysia, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. The DoFE data shows labor approvals for European countries such as Romania, and Croatia increasing along with Cyprus and Malta. Similarly, more labor approvals have been issued in this fiscal for Asian countries like Japan and South Korea. Outbound Labor migration has reached a five-year high in FY 2021/22 after three straight years of decline with the DoFE issuing a total of 630,089 labor approvals in the last fiscal year. Between 2008/09 and 2021/22, more than 4.7 million new labor approvals were issued to Nepali migrants seeking to work abroad. These numbers increased consistently, reaching a peak in 2013/14 when more than half a million new approvals were issued. Growth in remittance  With healthy growth in labor migration, the remittance inflow has also surged by 27.1 percent in the first seven months of the current fiscal year. According to Nepal Rastra Bank, Nepal received remittances worth Rs 689.88bn till mid-February, 2023 compared to a decrease of 4.4 percent in the same period of the last fiscal year. In US dollar terms, remittance inflows increased by 16.4 percent to $5.30bn in the review period against a decrease of 5.3 percent in the same period of the previous year. Labor permit approval (First eight months)

The price of gold has dropped by Rs 700 per tola in the domestic market on Monday. According to the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers’ Association, the yellow bullion is being traded at Rs 109, 300 per tola today. The yellow metal was traded at Rs 110, 000 per tola on Sunday. Meanwhile, tejabi gold is being traded at Rs 108, 800 per tola. It was traded at Rs 109, 500. Similarly, the price of silver has dropped by Rs 15 and is being traded at Rs 1,345 per tola today.

Five Deputy Inspector General (DIGs) of Nepal Police have been promoted to the post of Additional Inspector General. A Cabinet meeting held on Monday on the recommendation of the Promotion Committee promoted five DIGs to AIG, a minister said. DIGs Basanta Bahadur Kunwar, Tek Prasad Rai, Deepak Thapa, Shyam Lal Gyawali and Kiran Bajrachayar were recommended for the post of AIG. Among them, Kunwar’s name was at the first number.    

Newly elected Vice-President Ram Sahaya Yadav took that oath of office and secrecy amidst a function at Sheetal Niwas on Monday. He is the third Vice-President of the Republic of Nepal. Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) leader Yadav was elected as the Vice-President in the election held on Friday for the fourth term. He will assume the office today itself. After being elected as the Vice-President, he resigned from the lawmaker and the Janata Samajbadi Party. Yadav was elected as the Vice-President by securing 30, 328 votes while closest contender Astha Laxmi Shakya of the CPN-UML garnered 16, 328 votes.

Established in 2015, Prixa Technologies is among the fast-growing IT companies in Nepal specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), news websites, mobile apps, big data, content management systems, cloud hosting, IT consultation services, and social media marketing and employs over 70 professionals. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University and a gold medalist of Pulchowk Campus, Manish Sharma is the co-founder and CEO of Prixa. ApEx talked to Sharma to learn about the IT industry in Nepal. Excerpts: What is Prixa currently working on? At Prixa, we recognize Nepal’s need to adopt modern technologies for growth, while acknowledging that costly foreign solutions often don’t fulfill the needs of the local market. Our main objective is to maximize technology adoption in Nepal by providing affordable, cutting-edge solutions tailored to local businesses and communities, fostering innovation and enabling them to become competitive in the rapidly changing global technology landscape. For instance, we are currently developing AI solutions targeted at the local languages in the Nepali market. We have diversified into different verticals. Over 50 media companies are our clients running on our Snowberry platform. We also work in the sector of advertisement analytics, large-scale cloud computing, display technologies, enterprise software solutions, etc. We operate one of the largest content delivery networks in Nepal scaling to billions of requests each month. We have also increased our efforts in the Internet of Things (IoT). For instance, we are working with government bodies to make low-cost high-precision weather forecast solutions in remote locations. How do you view the current state of Nepal’s IT infrastructure? The IT industry here works in multiple models. For instance, some companies are just upgrading for Nepali clients while the majority of them cater to international clients with mixed models and some are exclusively working for foreign companies. There are lots of challenges for countries like Nepal. Nepal needs to upgrade on a policy basis. We still need a foreign solution to solve our problems but we do not have an easy channel for payment and interaction. We are working with a bunch of cloud providers but we still are facing the hassle of payment. Yet, the IT industry is growing rapidly. How do you see Nepali media websites vis-à-vis the international market? I think media websites in Nepal are more advertisement centric. Business strategies are obviously essential to be sustainable in a market but, currently, we have been observing in our clients that their strategies are deviating towards subscription based for a better experience. The company itself has fully developed user personalization. Besides, I don’t think the media itself is fully prepared for investing on their websites. But, hopefully, with time, it will get better from all dimensions. Riri One is Prixa’s ambitious AI project. Is it a breakthrough for digital media? Riri One was specially designed for services that concern a text-to-speech engine for Nepali languages like Nepali, Newari, and Maithili to create inclusivity in our society of diversified communities. Riri also has Riri Two and Three which will be released soon. Riri Two understands what people are saying. It’s a speech-to-text engine and it is in the pilot phase. While Riri Three is a full end-to-end conversational engine. I feel grateful for collaborating with Annapurna Media Network for Riri One. It’s not a new thing about text-to-speech being launched as it already existed in some smaller projects. But the new breakthrough is that Riri production is life-like and in the Nepali media industry, it is the first of its kind. We are still in beta and there are many things to update. We are seeing a high rate of user response and engagement. We have worked with over 50 media houses but we are seeing the breakthrough for the very first time. Looking at the statistics, we could find that users are consuming audio news more. I believe it’s a great step to fill a gap in the digital media sector. Web security has emerged as a major concern lately. Why are our government websites so vulnerable? In the IT sector, 100 percent data security cannot be guaranteed. Having said that, I wouldn’t deny the fact that data security is a baseline responsibility of IT. I would say that carelessness in practicing ground practices could be one of those problems. The recent hack incident is being seriously investigated by the government. They have even established a security task force and hopefully, it will bring a positive outcome. The management team needs to scrutinize the bottlenecks and the government should be prioritizing fundamental security practices. The government has been managing sensitive data and has been archiving it in digitized form. So, the data breach could hamper public privacy and national security. The common responsibility needs to be examined such that IT companies and the government can coordinate to solve the problems. The data breach is not just a crucial problem in the government sector but also in the private sector. What advice do you have for IT aspirants? I suggest they explore the opportunities in diversified fields but they should be more careful about preparing themselves in a certain direction from ground level. They mustn’t think the opportunities reside only abroad. I would count myself as an example as I had abroad studies and I am doing something here in Nepal by myself and so are my colleagues. We are also accepting freshers in our company to help the aspirants. As this sector is diversified, the more you delve into it, the more you explore the problem and the more you seek out opportunities within the challenges because there are oceans of things that are left undone. What new trends in AI are emerging currently? Rapid advancements in generative AI, such as Chat GPT, Bard AI, LLaMA AI, and many more, have been achieved. The blockchain concept is being adopted by businesses, and decentralized technologies are likewise expanding. Nepal is among the top countries to log in to Chat GPT which shows how interested Nepalis are in new IT trends. The world is advancing with AI, and I think Nepal shouldn’t fall behind. This is how the business world is going toward the AI-driven landscape, which could eventually change quickly and drastically in the future.