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Balkrishna Basnet, President of Press Council Nepal, has been honored with Himdamaru title. The award was conferred to Basnet by the Literary Journalist Association on Thursday.

He was honored for his contribution to the environment by studying and researching mountains and environment and informing people about saving the mountains through journalism. The association felicitated him for his studies on protecting the mountains, environment and the effects of climate change and producing a documentary on the impact of climate change on the Himalayan region. He was honored for his 25 years of dedication for protection of the mountains.

Senior literary figure Rochak Ghimire, senior artist Madan Das Shrestha and Mount Everest climber Tembachiri Sherpa honored Basnet with a certificate and a shawl.

Basnet after receiving the award requested that journalism should be focused on the protection of the mountains and the environment to save the earth. He has also suggested that the concerned bodies should be serious about the fact that the snow in the mountains of Nepal is decreasing because of climate change and this is damaging the entire tourism industry.

“If the mountains survive the water and tourism area remains. Foreigners come to see mountains and therefore we need to save the mountains,” Basnet said.

Ghimire praised Basnet for working for prosperity for a long time through the field of journalism.

Sherpa shared his experiences of working together with Basnet for the last 24 years. He recalled the days when Sherpa first climbed Mt Everest at the age of 14, when Basnet along with a management team had gone to the Everest Base Camp. 

Badri Kumar Guragain is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of National Cooperative Bank Ltd (NCBL) with over 16 years of experience in finance, budgeting, planning, management and consulting. Currently, he is pursuing PhD in risk management of financial cooperatives in Nepal. He has also been awarded with ‘Prabal Janasewashree Chaturtha Shreni’ by the President of Nepal for his contribution in the cooperative sector.

Guragain, in this cooperative blueprint, has presented a report on the cooperative sector on four dimensions—present condition, challenges, way forward and the outcome. 

Introduction

Cooperatives occupy a foundational tier in Nepal’s financial ecosystem, focusing on empowering and supporting impoverished communities. They primarily serve individuals lacking skills, capital, and land, who constitute the cooperative’s target demographic. Despite receiving training, resources, and credit assistance, businesses within these communities often operate at a modest scale and face vulnerability, necessitating additional support such as insurance provided by cooperatives. As these businesses gradually expand and thrive, banks, the subsequent component of the ecosystem, extend their services to accommodate them. Thus, the primary goal for cooperatives is to empower poverty-stricken communities, ensuring their sustainable growth and development.

Production-driven

Cooperatives ought to prioritize production-driven initiatives to effectively contribute to the economy, functioning as a genuine sector. However, in Nepal, cooperatives often charge the highest loan interest rates. This contradicts the cooperative ethos of cooperation and undermines its true essence. To rectify this, cooperatives should focus on establishing a presence in marginalized areas and empowering residents with lower interest rates, subsidies, resources, and skills. Achieving this necessitates an alternative channel for resource provision, as cooperatives cannot rely solely on their deposits. Therefore, capital from the Youth and Small Entrepreneurs Self-Employment Fund which has around Rs 20-25bn, along with the 4 percent lending allocation by banks for deprived sectors (total around Rs 200bn), could be utilized. 

Mission drift

The ongoing crisis in the cooperative sector stems from past mismanagement and misuse. Historically, cooperatives have been community-oriented enterprises. However, there has been a decline in the spirit of community and cooperation within these entities. Factors contributing to this include management practices centered around promoters, marginalization of member roles, disregard for legality and due process in favor of individual interests, restriction of meaningful member participation to secure personal assets, and a shift towards individual benefit rather than collective financial gains. Hence, there is a misalignment between the intended purpose of cooperatives and their actual utilization—a mission drift.

Regulatory bodies

It is said that cooperatives rely on self-regulation, but as they grow in size and turnover, the need for an effective regulatory body becomes unavoidable to safeguard members’ savings and trust. Presently, the cooperative sector is overseen by a group of civil servants within the administration, yet the effectiveness of this regulation and monitoring is hindered by inadequate coordination in managing the detailed internal affairs and financial risks of cooperatives. This suggests a need for structural modifications—a second tier regulation system. Certain services offered by the country’s banking sector and financial cooperatives are similar in nature. However, differences in regulatory provisions create challenges. In cases where regulatory systems are weak, there’s a heightened risk of financial misconduct and tarnishing the reputation of the entire sector.

Youth and skilled human resources

The cooperative sector faces a shortage of skilled human resources, largely because the younger generation is not drawn to it. Additionally, existing employees often lack even basic knowledge of cooperative norms, values, and principles. This suggests that skilled individuals may not be attracted to the sector due to inefficiencies in employee selection, training, career development, service provision, and working conditions. As institutional governance weakens and the sector’s reputation declines, employee turnover rates escalate, contributing to high migration from the cooperative sector. It appears that cooperative organizations have made minimal efforts to enhance the capacity of their current workforce.

Community spirit

Cooperative business operates on principles distinct from individual entrepreneurship and open-market dynamics, prioritizing collective interests and common needs. However, there’s been a departure from upholding fundamental norms and values such as self-reliance, accountability, democratic management, equality, justice, and solidarity, with some businesses operating beyond the organization’s intended scope. The responsibility for self-regulation has been neglected, and cooperative education has been reduced to mere formality. As a result of inadequate coordination among cooperatives, the collective spirit inherent to cooperatives is diminishing.

Asset/liability analysis

The organization needs to conduct a thorough analysis of the costs associated with resource collection and the profits generated from its operations. This analysis should include an examination of financial sources such as share capital, funds, deposits, and the ratio of external debt. It appears that the cooperative sector is encountering challenges due to insufficient analysis. Specifically, cooperatives are grappling with a liquidity crisis, primarily stemming from their practice of investing in long-term loans and fixed assets using short-term deposits.

Direction

Cooperatives must avoid functioning as parallel banks. Reports from the National Planning Commission and other institutions pinpoint regions with high poverty rates and less resources, which cooperatives should prioritize. They should refrain from extending loans to financially capable individuals who can readily access funds from traditional banks. By concentrating efforts on underserved areas and directing resources to those truly in need, cooperatives can fulfill their intended purpose more effectively.

Way forward

The government should take the lead in returning depositors’ money in installments, prioritizing the poor and needy, especially those with relatively small amounts (less than Rs 500,000) that are crucial for their livelihood. As a first step, the property of cooperative management teams and employees should be frozen. To facilitate these payments, the government can introduce various schemes, such as tax-free funds. An amount of around Rs 10-15bn would be sufficient for this purpose, which can later be reimbursed to the tax-free fund investors by auctioning off the property of those responsible for mismanaging the cooperatives.

Result

Understanding the true essence of cooperatives and addressing all mismanagement issues while aligning with the aforementioned directions will lead to a reduction in multidimensional poverty and an increase in per capita income. As we approach graduation from Least Developed Countries (LDCs), access to loans at lower interest rates and subsidies from the World Trade Organization may diminish, potentially resulting in inflation, given our import-dependent market. However, a thriving cooperative sector can bolster locally-produced goods, meeting domestic demands and mitigating these challenges.

Global goods trade is expected to pick up gradually this year following a contraction in 2023 that was driven by the lingering effects of high energy prices and inflation, WTO economists said in a new forecast on April 10. The volume of world merchandise trade should increase by 2.6 percent in 2024 and 3.3 percent in 2025 after falling 1.2 percent in 2023. However, regional conflicts, geopolitical tensions and economic policy uncertainty pose substantial downside risks to the forecast. 

In the latest ‘Global Trade Outlook and Statistics’ report, WTO economists note that inflationary pressures are expected to abate this year, allowing real incomes to grow again—particularly in advanced economies—thus providing a boost to the consumption of manufactured goods. A recovery of demand for tradable goods in 2024 is already evident, with indices of new export orders pointing to improving conditions for trade at the start of the year.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said: “We are making progress towards global trade recovery, thanks to resilient supply chains and a solid multilateral trading framework—which are vital for improving livelihoods and welfare. It’s imperative that we mitigate risks like geopolitical strife and trade fragmentation to maintain economic growth and stability.”

High energy prices and inflation continued to weigh heavily on demand for manufactured goods, resulting in a 1.2 percent decline in world merchandise trade volume for 2023. The decline was larger in value terms, with merchandise exports down five percent to $24.01trn. Trade developments on the services side were more upbeat, with commercial services exports up nine percent to $7.54trn, partly offsetting the decline in goods trade. 

Import volumes were down in most regions but especially in Europe, where they fell sharply. The main exceptions were large fuel-exporting economies, whose imports were sustained by strong export revenues as energy prices remained high by historical standards. World trade remained well above its pre-pandemic level throughout 2023. By the fourth quarter it was nearly unchanged compared to the same period in 2022 (+0.1 percent) and had only risen slightly compared to the same period in 2021 (+0.5 percent).

The report further estimates global GDP growth at market exchange rates will remain mostly stable over the next two years at 2.6 percent in 2024 and 2.7 percent in 2025, after slowing to 2.7 percent in 2023 from 3.1 percent in 2022. The contrast between the steady growth of real GDP and the slowdown in real merchandise trade volume is linked to inflationary pressures, which had a downward effect on consumption of trade-intensive goods, particularly in Europe and North America. 

Downside risks

Moving forward, the report warns that geopolitical tensions and policy uncertainty could limit the extent of the trade rebound. Food and energy prices could again be subject to price spikes linked to geopolitical events. The report’s special analytical section on the Red Sea crisis notes that while the economic impact of the Suez Canal disruptions stemming from the Middle East conflict has so far been relatively limited, some sectors, such as automotive products, fertilizers and retail, have already been affected by delays and freight costs hikes. 

The report furthermore presents new data indicating that geopolitical tensions have affected trade patterns marginally but have not triggered a sustained trend toward de-globalization. Bilateral trade between the United States and China, which reached a record high in 2022, grew 30 percent less in 2023 than did their trade with the rest of the world. Moreover, for the whole of 2023, global trade in non-fuel intermediate goods—which provides a useful gauge of the status of global value chains—was down six percent. 

Signs of fragmentation may also be emerging in services trade: US imports of information, computer, and telecommunications (ICT) services from North American trading partners (mostly Canada) increased from 15.7 percent of total ICT imports in 2018 to 23.0 percent in 2023 while US imports of the same from Asian trading partners (mostly India) fell from 45.1 percent to 32.6 percent. Fragmentation of data flow policies along geopolitical lines, moreover, could cause global trade of goods and services in real terms to fall by 1.8 percent and global GDP to decline by one percent according to estimates from a forthcoming study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the WTO.

WTO Chief Economist Ralph Ossa said: “Some governments have become more skeptical about the benefits of trade and have taken steps aimed at re-shoring production and shifting trade towards friendly nations. The resilience of trade is also being tested by disruptions on two of the world's main shipping routes: the Panama Canal, which is affected by freshwater shortages, and the diversion of traffic away from the Red Sea. Under these conditions of sustained disruptions, geopolitical tensions, and policy uncertainty, risks to the trade outlook are tilted to the downside.”

Regional trade outlook

If current projections hold, Africa’s exports will grow faster than those of any other region in 2024, up 5.3 percent; this however is from a low base, since the continent's exports remained depressed after the Covid-19 pandemic. The CIS the region’s expected growth is just slightly below 5.3 percent, also from a reduced base after the region's exports plunged following the war in Ukraine. North America (3.6 percent), the Middle East (3.5 percent) and Asia (3.4 percent) should all see moderate export growth, while South America is expected to grow more slowly, at 2.6 percent. European exports are once again expected to lag behind those of other regions, with growth of just 1.7 percent.

Strong import volume growth of 5.6 percent in Asia and 4.4 percent in Africa should help prop up global demand for traded goods this year. However, all other regions are expected to see below average import growth, including South America (2.7 percent), the Middle East (1.2 percent), North America (1.0 percent), Europe (0.1 percent) and the CIS region (-3.8 percent).

Merchandise exports of least-developed countries (LDCs) are forecasted to grow 2.7 percent in 2024, down from 4.1 percent in 2023, before growth accelerates to 4.2 percent in 2025. Meanwhile, imports by LDCs should grow 6.0 percent this year and 6.8 percent next year following a 3.5 percentcontraction 

Trade in services

World commercial services trade grew nine percent in 2023 despite a decline in freight transport, thanks to recovering international travel and surging digitally delivered services. In 2024, sports events to be held in Europe in the summer, as well as the easing of visa requirements by various countries, are expected to boost tourism and passenger transport.

Global exports of digitally delivered services soared to $4.25trn in 2023, up nine percent year-on-year, and accounted for 13.8 percent of world exports of goods and services. In 2023, the value of these services—traded over borders through computer networks and encompassing everything from professional and management services to streaming of music and videos, online gaming, and remote education—surpassed pre-pandemic levels by over 50 percent. In Europe and Asia, which hold a global market share of 52.4 percent and 23.8 percent respectively, exports rose by 11 percent and 9 percent. Growth accelerated in Africa (13 percent) and in South and Central America and the Caribbean (11 percent), exceeding the global average. The two regions, which formed only 0.9 percent and 1.6 percent of global exports in 2023, are on the path to take advantage of digitally delivered services trade.

The WTO has released a new dataset on trade in services by mode of supply as in the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It provides valuable insights on how services trade has modified over the years, including the impact of digitalization and of the Covid-19 pandemic.

 This dataset as well as the latest estimates on digitally delivered services trade and service trade in general can be visualized and downloaded in the Global Services Trade Data Hub. The newly launched Global Services Trade Data Hub gives access to comprehensive WTO services trade data. It provides visualizations and customizable features catering to the diverse needs of trade negotiators, analysts, researchers, and decision-makers, to derive insights.

Dr Chakra Raj Pandey is a co-founder and the Chief of Orthopedics and Traumatology at Anamiwa Health. He is highly sought after for his expertise in complex trauma, arthroscopy, joint replacement, sports medicine, and pediatric orthopedics. Dr Pandey was among the founding directors and served as the first medical director of Grande Hospital until 2021.

Born in Melamchi to farming parents, Dr Chakra Raj Pandey had the opportunity to attend school in Kathmandu. He studied at Laboratory School, supported by scholarships for several years, while residing with his uncle. Ranking 6th in the SLC examinations of 1980 showcased his academic prowess. “During those days, our sole focus was on excelling academically,” recalls Pandey of his school years. 

Despite enjoying football and dancing, his dedication to academic excellence remained unwavering.

Asked about his interest in science and later medicine, Pandey reflects on a pivotal moment from his youth: aiding an injured elderly woman struck by a bus when he was a ninth grader. Despite lacking technical knowledge, his innate desire to assist those in need ignited a passion for healthcare. 

Immersing himself in biographies of notable figures such as Albert Schweitzer, Madame Curie, Florence Nightingale, Joseph Lister, and Alexander Fleming further fueled his ambition. Driven by a multitude of experiences, Pandey was determined to pursue medicine, devoting himself wholeheartedly to his studies.

Recalling the catalyst for his journey into orthopedic medicine, Dr Pandey reminisces about witnessing the groundbreaking work of William DeVries in 1982, who implanted the world’s first permanent artificial heart. Initially drawn to vascular surgery or cardiology, Pandey’s trajectory shifted after sustaining a knee injury during a football match in 1987, which introduced him to the field of Orthopedics. Despite the challenges posed by the injury and subsequent surgery, his determination only strengthened, propelling him towards his chosen path.

During his undergraduate studies, Pandey’s personal experience with knee surgery influenced his decision to pursue orthopedic surgery. With the support of his teacher, he embarked on a journey that ultimately led to his specialization in Orthopedic Surgery. His unwavering commitment to his craft is exemplified by his relentless pursuit of excellence during his postgraduate residency in Turkey, where he exceeded expectations through sheer dedication and hard work.

Dr Pandey’s vision for Anamiwa Health, which he co-founded with his wife Sapana Pandey, emphasizes the importance of patient care and a proficient, cohesive team across all facets of the institution. Committed to upholding healthcare values, Pandey ensures that his team at Anamiwa strives for excellence in patient treatment and fosters a culture of continuous improvement.

Anamiwa Health complements Nepal’s healthcare system with its specialized focus on joints, arthroscopy, sports medicine, joint replacement, complex orthopedic trauma, and revision surgeries. Dr Pandey’s 33 years of active practice exemplifies his dedication to providing optimal orthopedic care, considering socio-economic and psychological factors alongside medical treatment.