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More than 20 people have been killed and 18 injured after a bus carrying foreign tourists crashed off an elevated overpass, plunged some 15 metres (50 feet) and caught fire near Venice in northern Italy, officials said, Aljazeera reported.

The bus veered off the road on Tuesday evening at approximately 19:45pm local time (17:45 GMT), crashed through a barrier, plummeted onto electricity lines and caught fire, according to reports.

“An apocalyptic scene, there are no words,” Venice’s Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said in a post on social media.

Official mourning has been declared in Venice in memory of the victims, the mayor said.

What caused the horrific accident was unclear.

Venice City Councillor Renato Boraso said the bus had been carrying 40 passengers,  21 of whom had died and 18 were injured.

Boraso warned that the death toll could rise as several of those hurt in the crash were in critical condition in hospital.

“It’s an appalling tragedy, the city is in mourning,” Boraso told Sky Italia television.

Five of the victims were Ukrainians and one was German, said Venice’s prefect Michele Di Bari, the local representative of the interior ministry. The bus was also carrying passengers from France and Croatia, Italian news agency ANSA reported.

“The bus is totally crushed. The firefighters had difficulty getting a lot of the bodies out,” Di Bari told Sky Italia television. He said two children were among the victims.

Late on Tuesday evening, rescuers were still struggling to remove the wreckage of the bus to make sure no more passengers were trapped inside, according to Aljazeera.

The Veneto region governor, Luca Zaia, told RAI state television that the cause of the accident was still unclear.

“This is an important tragedy, but it’s difficult to understand how it happened,” Zaia said. “The bus was new and electric, and that street wasn’t particularly problematic.”

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her condolences, saying in a statement that her government’s thoughts were with “the victims, their families and their friends”.

Italy has suffered a number of deadly bus crashes in recent years.

In 2017, 16 people on board a bus carrying Hungarian students died in an accident near the northern city of Verona, while 40 people died in 2013 when a bus plunged off a viaduct in southern Italy.

The World Bank has projected that Nepal's economy is poised to achieve a growth rate of 3.9 percent in the fiscal year 2024. This marks a notable improvement compared to the previous fiscal year, FY 2023, when the country’s economic expansion was limited, registering only a 1.9 percent growth rate.

The World Bank’s optimistic report comes amid a deep economic crisis that the country is facing. Releasing its Nepal Development Update-October 2023 on Tuesday, the World Bank has said that Nepal’s economy is expected to rebound to 3.9 percent in FY 2024 owing to the impact of the lifting of import restrictions, a strong rebound in tourism, and the gradual loosening of monetary policy. The economic growth in FY 2025, will be five percent, according to the World Bank.

In its report, the World Bank says that the impact of lifting the final import restriction measures in January 2023 and the gradual loosening of monetary policy are expected to support growth in the industrial and services sectors. “Sub-sectors that suffered the brunt of the import restrictions and monetary policy tightening in FY 2023, including wholesale and retail trade, construction, and manufacturing, are expected to gradually recover over the forecast period,” reads the report.

While wholesale and retail trade are expected to benefit from the lifting of import restrictions and boost service sector growth, the report says, agricultural sector growth is expected to slow in 2024 due to the impact of the lumpy skin disease on livestock and a decline in rice production.

According to the report, strong energy sector growth helped to avoid an industrial contraction, since manufacturing and construction outputs shrank. Hydroelectric generation increased significantly for the second year in row and added close to 500 megawatts of hydroelectric power to the national grid, the report says, Nepal nevertheless remains a net energy importer.

The top financial body further states that slow credit growth and import restrictions contributed to a reduction in private investment on the demand side. Lower capital expenditure and revenue underperformance drove lower public investment. As a result, total investment decreased by more than 10 percent, a sharper reduction than in 2020. Private consumption remained robust, owing to strong remittance inflows.

Inflation is gradually increasing and a new report says that it is likely to go up.  Average consumer price inflation reached a seven-year peak in 2023. Average inflation amounted to 7.8 percent, above the central bank’s seven percent policy ceiling, driven by both food and non-food prices. Key drivers of food prices, which increased by 6.9 percent, included supply side shocks such as India’s wheat and rice export restrictions, and domestic policy changes including the removal of VAT exemptions on multiple basic food items and price support to producers of rice paddies, milk, and wheat, the report says.

Non-food prices rose by 8.5 percent, driven by higher housing and utility prices, and an increase in the consultation fee of medical doctors in May 2023, the report states, the decline in edible oil prices from February 2023 onwards, reflecting global price reductions, had an offsetting effect on prices. The persistence of high inflation impedes policies to stimulate growth. Particularly, Nepal’s vulnerability to external shocks implies a difficult trade-off between policies that boost growth and those that contain inflation, according to the report.

Agricultural output remained resilient and expanded by 2.7 percent. Rice paddy production supported the sectoral growth and increased by 6.9 percent, reflecting a good summer monsoon and improved seed varieties (Figures 1 and 2). However, a lumpy skin disease has affected livestock as of early April 2023, infecting more than 1m and killing close to 50,000. The resulting lower dairy product and meat production could negatively affect agricultural output growth. Updated statistics will be released by the National Statistics Office in April 2024.

Manufacturing and construction shrank by two percent and 2.6 percent, respectively. The decline was partly due to lower production of key construction materials (cement, basic iron, and steel) and vegetable oils in the first half of FY 2023. Higher frequency indicators suggest that the decline continued in the second half of FY 2023. Lower demand resulting from the elevated prices of manufactured goods and construction materials further weighed on industrial output, which increased by a meager 0.6 percent.

Sluggish wholesale and retail trade slowed the pace of services sector growth. Authorities estimate that the services sector expanded by 2.3 percent in this year, the slowest pace since 2020. Growth of the wholesale and retail trade sub-services sector declined 0.5 percent due to high inflation and lower goods imports.

Looser monetary policy and the lifting of import restrictions imply an increase in goods imports over the medium-term, the report states, policies to contain credit growth and lower one-off imports, including of Covid-19 vaccines, are expected to keep imports below its 2022 historic high. Near-record migration of Nepali workers should be reflected in strong medium-term remittance inflows which, however, are not expected to balance the goods and services trade deficit. Consequently, the current account deficit is expected to widen to 3.7 percent of GDP in 2025, and 4.6 percent of GDP in 2025. 

Revenues are expected to increase in line with higher goods imports, given that taxation focuses heavily on trade. The 2024 budget envisions lower federal spending on capital investment and fiscal transfers to subnational governments, yet higher debt servicing costs. Overall, the recovery of revenues is expected to reduce the fiscal deficit to 3.5 percent in 2024 and 3.3 percent in 2025. Together with the rebound in growth, tighter fiscal policy is expected to keep the overall public debt burden contained at around 41 percent of GDP in 2024 and 2025.

In the external sector, the current account deficit narrowed to a six-year low in 2023, driven by lower imports and higher remittances. The current account deficit fell from 12.6 percent of GDP in 2022 to 1.3 percent of GDP this year.  The reduction occurred through lower imports of goods and services, which fell from 42.6 percent of GDP in 2022 to 34.5 percent of GDP in 2023. Exports on the other hand remained stable, and remittances rebounded strongly. Foreign reserves ended 2023 at a comfortable level of 10 months of concurrent import cover, above the policy floor of 7 months of import cover.

Official remittance inflows surged to a five-year high in this year. Remittance inflows climbed from 20.4 percent of GDP in 2022 to 22.7 percent of GDP.  Nepal’s dependence on the export of workers and remittance inflows increased sharply over the past two decades. Goods and services exports have fallen significantly since the early 2000s as a percentage of GDP.

In FY23, total exports amounted to 6.9 percent of GDP, only one-third of what the average South Asian middle-income country exports. Not surprisingly, the 2019 World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index ranked Nepal 108th out of 141 countries.30 Net foreign direct investment (FDI) has also underperformed. Remittance inflows on the other hand increased to 22.7 percent of GDP in FY23, are the main source of foreign currency, and the main driver of private consumption and economic growth.

According to the bank, the near-record migration of Nepali workers should be reflected in strong medium-term remittance inflows which, however, are not expected to balance the goods and services trade deficit. “Consequently, the current account deficit is expected to widen to 3.7 percent of GDP in FY 2024, and 4.6 percent of GDP in FY 2025,” reads the report.

However, there are multiple risks to the outlook including an erratic monsoon, which could dampen agricultural growth; a renewed spike in commodity prices or continued food export bans by India which would raise prices; and higher inflation which could keep policy rates elevated, increase domestic debt servicing costs, and drag on growth. 

“Amid challenges, Nepal is leading the way towards operationalizing its green, resilient, and inclusive development vision to shape the country’s long-term economic recovery,” said Faris Hadad-Zervos, World Bank Country Director for Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. “Improved external competitiveness is key to driving this recovery and enabling Nepal to compete in export markets, in terms of both prices and quality. This requires an emphasis on reforms to help increase domestic productivity and reduce the inflation differential with Nepal’s trading partners.”

 Major points

• Nepal’s export performance has continuously declined.
• Real appreciation of exchange rate and productivity deficit negatively affected exports.
• The budgetary process needs further strengthening to better support planning.
• Increasing domestic productivity and containing domestic inflation key to improving external competitiveness.
• Credit growth to the private sector slowed owing to policy measures taken to help correct the external imbalances.
• Fiscal space diminished further with the contraction of revenues.
• Economic activity is expected to gradually gain momentum. 
• The current account deficit is expected to increase moderately.
• A rebound in revenues should reduce the fiscal deficit and contain public debt.
• Prudent policies to stimulate growth and contain downside risks are key.

Recommendations

• Changing the current tax model by shifting taxation away from the border and reducing high import tariffs
• Improving the implementation of fiscal federalism which would facilitate effective investments in infrastructure and services
• Simplifying and streamlining processes to attract more FDI which would create significant knowledge and spillover effects.
• In addition, containing domestic inflation would reduce the inflation differential with trading partners. This would help avoid further real appreciation of the exchange rate.

The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority has moved the Special Court against Secretary at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce Madhu Kumar Marasini and eight others demanding the recovery of around Rs 230m embezzled in the name of a National Payment Gateway about six years ago.  

Other officials facing the charge of committing irregularities to the tune of Rs 230m in the National Payment Gateway scam include the then secretary at the Ministry of Science and Technology and chair at National Information Technology Center (NITC) Sanjaya Sharma, then executive director at NITC Pranita Upadhyaya, Nepal Telecom’s managing director Sunil Poudel (then deputy executive director at NITC) and NITC director Safal Shrestha (deputy director at the time of the scam). CIAA has also accused then assistant director at NITC Ramesh Pokharel, then account officer Nim Bahaduar Wali, then account officer at the center Ram Bahadur Budha and engineer at the center Ram Sharan Gayak of involvement in the scam.     

The anti-corruption agency has accused Marasini, then chief at the Ministry of Finance’s Budget and Program Division, of getting around Rs 250m released in the name of the gateway by preparing a faulty estimate and getting it approved despite the absence of infrastructure required for the operation of the gateway by keeping subordinate and superordinate authorities in the dark.

The CIAA unearthed the scam while investigating a complaint regarding irregularities related to the gateway and subsequently moved the court against the nine officials. It has demanded the recovery of around Rs 230.27m from them as per sub-clause 3(1) of clause 17 of Corruption Eradication Act 2059 for causing loss/damage to government property of the government as well as a public enterprise.

The payment gateway, procured six years ago, remains non-functional till date.

At noon on Thursday, a lot of people were waiting for their turn to purchase outpatient department (OPD) tickets at the Provincial Hospital of Madhesh Institute of Health Sciences in Janakpurdham, Dhanusha. However, there were no specialist hospitals on duty. Patients waited till 3 pm, but the doctors were nowhere to be seen.

While the names of several doctors, including Dr. Siddhidatri Jha, Dr. Ramdev Chaudhary, Dr. Bipin Kumar Yadav, Dr. Digbijaya Kumar Thakur, Dr. Rameshwar Mahaseth, Dr. Shyam Babu Sah, and Dr. Tarakeshwar Mahato, were listed on the duty roster, only Dr. Siddhidatri Jha was on duty attending to patients. Dr. Thakur had taken leave, but the others remained conspicuously absent without notifying the hospital administration.

In the pediatric department, where four doctors, including Dr. Baidyanath Thakur, Dr. Abhaya Mandal, Dr. Jamun Prasad Singh, and Dr. Jitendra Dhakur, were expected to be on duty, none were in attendance. Among the four doctors assigned to the gynecology department, only three were present, as Dr. Shweta Sah was absent without prior communication with the hospital administration.

The patients, who were waiting since 11 am, had no option but to return home. Some were compelled to seek medical care at private hospitals. Bindeshwar Yadav of Janakpurdham-2, who was waiting to see doctors for his swollen limbs, looked frustrated. "I have been waiting for hours, but I am not sure whether the doctors will arrive," he added. Amod Yadav from Mirchaiya in Siraha echoed the sentiment. “I have been waiting for hours for a doctor to review my report. But the doctor was nowhere to be found,” he added.

This mess is not because the hospital is seeing a shortage of doctors. There are adequate doctors on the hospital’s payroll. However, the visible absence of doctors attending to patients is worrying. Sushil Karna from Janakpur said that most government doctors are attending to patients at private hospitals. "The doctors come, sign the attendance register, and then rush off to attend to patients in private hospitals," he said, adding, "When we ask for doctors, the nurses give us a hard time."

Patients say that a majority of the government doctors work in private hospitals or their own clinics to earn extra income. "Doctors do come to the hospital but often leave around noon. Unfortunately, we cannot question them," a contractual employee at the hospital said. Many employees at the hospital share the sentiment that doctors typically arrive late and leave early. “Since all the doctors have strong political affiliations, they do what they want to,” a staff nurse at the hospital said. “These doctors are expected to be at the hospital from 10 am to 4 pm, but they rarely stay for more than two hours.”