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There is no impact of any significant weather system in the country.

It will be generally fair today, according to the Weather Forecasting Division.

The weather service, however, informed that high hills and mountainous areas of Karnali and Sudurpaschim Provinces will be partly cloudy tonight.  

The Kathmandu Valley recorded a minimum temperature at 6 degree Celsius at 5:45am. The maximum temperature will remain between 17 to 19 degree Celsius today, the Division added.

The nationwide tiger census, conducted once every four years, officially commenced today. 

The launch was marked by a formal inaugural program held in Sauraha, Chitwan.

The census is being led by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) under the Ministry of Forests and Environment, in coordination with the Department of Forests and Land Conservation. The National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Nepal, and the Geological Society of Nepal are providing technical and logistical support.

The tiger count is being carried out with the assistance of the Nepal Army, Buffer Zone and Community Forest Users’ Committees, it is said. 

According to the DNPWC, the census is expected to be completed within two and a half to three months, with the nationwide mobilization of 25 technical personnel.

DNPWC Director General Buddi Sagar Paudel stated that 1,100 advanced camera traps are being installed across tiger habitats. 

The tiger population will be estimated through the analysis of photographic captures of the species.

An estimated budget of approximately Rs 30 million is expected to cover the cost of the census, covering the mobilization of human resources, management of memory cards, tents, sleeping bags, and other logistical requirements.

The camera traps being used for the census were procured earlier, with each purchased at an around Rs 35,000.

Nepal has started counting the tiger population systematically using automated camera trap since 2009. 

In 2009, there were 121 tigers in Nepal. 

Counting of tigers has been carried out every four years since 2009. 

As per the Tiger Conservation Action Plan, the tiger census was already conducted in 2013, 2018 and 2022. Now, the counting of tigers is being conducted for 2026. 

Nepal has started observing Tiger Day since 2067 BS and counting of tiger population is carried out nation-wide every four years.

The population of tigers was 98 in 1995, 109 in 2000, 126 in 2005, 121 in 2009, 198 in 2013 and 235 in 2018.

To reduce the human-tiger conflict, he suggested providing alternative means of livelihood to the communities living on the fringes of the forests so that they will not have to go into the forests for livelihood and to change the attitude and behavior of the locals towards the wildlife.

18 problematic tigers caged throughout the country

The issue of problematic tigers is also rising in national parks, conservation areas and surrounding regions with a significant increase in the number of tigers.

In particular, tigers that have entered human settlements, attacked humans and domestic animals, or have been found injured are being rescued and kept in enclosures.

Currently, there are 18 troublesome tigers across the country. 

Among them, five are kept in cages at the central zoo in Jawalakhel, Lalitpur, seven in Chitwan National Park, four in Bardia National Park, and one each in Banke and Parsa National Parks. 

The government has been spending a large amount annually on the daily feeding, care, treatment, and other management of such tigers.

According to the latest figures in 2025, the number of tigers in the world has increased to 5,357. 

Among them, the highest number is in India with 3,167, followed by Russia with 750, Indonesia with 400, Nepal with 355, Thailand with 189, Bhutan with 151, Malaysia with 150, Bangladesh with 146, Myanmar with 22, China with 20, Vietnam with five, and Laos with two tigers.

The Asian Institute of Diplomacy and International Affairs (AIDIA) recently hosted consecutive high-level roundtable discussions with the non-resident ambassadors of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, underscoring Nepal’s efforts to diversify its economic diplomacy.

 The meetings focused on strengthening bilateral trade ties and exploring opportunities for cooperation in the energy sector, highlighting growing interest in engagement with Central Asia.

The back-to-back meetings with H.E. Sardor Mirzayusupovich Rustambaev of Uzbekistan and H.E. Lukmon Bobokalonzoda of Tajikistan brought together a diverse group of Nepalese policymakers, business leaders, and energy experts, highlighting the country’s growing interest in the Central Asian region.

At the roundtable ‘Nepal-Uzbekistan: Strengthening Trade and Investment Ties,’ Ambassador Rustambaev highlighted Uzbekistan’s economic rise, reporting a GDP of nearly $115 billion in 2024 and a doubling of foreign trade to $65 billion.

"Uzbekistan has undergone comprehensive reforms to create an open, transparent economy," Ambassador Rustambaev told the gathering, positioning his country as a gateway to a regional market of 300 million consumers.

At the roundtable ‘Nepal-Tajikistan: Strengthening Bilateral Ties with Focus on Energy,’ H.E. Lukmon Bobokalonzoda highlighted the two nations’ shared potential to become the ‘energy batteries’ of South and Central Asia.

Ambassador Bobokalonzoda urged deeper technical cooperation on high-altitude infrastructure and grid management, and called for direct air links to enhance tourism and business ties between Kathmandu and Dushanbe.

Both roundtables emphasized the need for Nepal to shift from a ‘landlocked’ to a ‘land-linked’ economy, urging that diplomatic goodwill be converted into tangible economic partnerships. By organizing the dialogues, AIDIA aims to guide entrepreneurs and policymakers in tapping these often-overlooked markets, expanding Nepal’s connectivity beyond its immediate neighbors.

Welcome to the launch of the new edition of the GVC Development Report, which comes out at a critical juncture for the future of value chains and the global economy. I also think it comes at a critical juncture as we try to reflect on the kind of WTO we want going forward and a valuable look at what is happening to value chains and how they are reconfiguring or not. It's very important. 

The report reflects a collective effort starting in 2017 to understand the evolution of global value chains. And I want to start by thanking UIBE President Zhao and his team at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing for producing this report. Thank you, as well as to our partners at the Asian Development Bank, IDE-JETRO, and the World Economic Forum for bringing this collaborative report to life. Our former chief economist and now editor in chief of the report Bob Koopman has been a wonderful leader throughout the two year production cycle. I'm really grateful for the excellent speakers today for bringing government and private sector perspectives on where things stand with respect to value chains and where they might be headed. The World Trade Organization Secretariat has been a proud contributor to the GVC report since the first day. I want to thank Johanna and under her the team--Victor, Michael, Ankai, Marc and other members of ERSD team. They know how proud I am of their work. It goes without seeing this is the kind of evidence of the kind of thing we are contributing to at the WTO if we are to make a difference.

This new report has reaffirmed something we at the WTO have been saying: globalization is far from over, and global value chains remain indispensable. The share of GVC trade in the global total has declined only marginally from its 2022 peak of 48%, to 46.3% last year. Firms and governments are not retreating from global integration, but reconfiguring it to meet new economic, political, and social priorities. This goes in the same direction of what we have been pushing for under the banner of a word coined by Bob Koopman called 're-globalization' that I completely fell in love with when I joined because it just captured what I was thinking and thought we should be thinking about a re-imagined globalization that helps to diversify global value chains and uses it to bring more economies that were on the margins of the global economy into the mainstream.

A unique opportunity is being presented to us for it to happen in a way that will take us away from excessive concentration, which is one of the things we are seeing now and it's amazing to me that at a time when the system is seeing so much disruption whichever way we look at it, it seems to be so resilient. Businesses are getting on, manufacturers and investors as much as they can, with the uncertainty and just doing what they know how to do best. And that's why we see the resilience in global value chains. 

In the face of the unprecedented shocks of the past decade, from the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerating climate pressures to rising geopolitical tensions and financial uncertainty global production networks have been resilient. Instead of unraveling, as some voices predicted, GVCs have been adapting, becoming more digital, and increasingly responding to security and sustainability concerns. 

The data and evidence collected for the report mainly runs through 2024 and thus they predate the tariff increases and associated uncertainty seen in 2025. That said, the latest available data as of this month appeared to confirm the report's key finding of GVC resilience. Trade growth has remained robust. Supply chains have shown themselves to be adaptable thanks to firms' agility and creative policy approaches to managing disruptions.  There are many who do not believe this evidence and find it counterintuitive. I think we have to be very ready to support and substantiate and defend the information we have.

As the Marrakech preamble reminds us, trade is a means to an end, and the report highlights how the ongoing shifts in value chains have profound implications for the way globalization affects people's lives and economic prospects. For instance, across Latin America and Africa new technologies and the green transition, together with the ongoing push for supply chain diversification, offer fresh possibilities to integrate into global value chains. Meanwhile, as the report describes, governments are using industrial policy and strategic partnerships to reposition economies within global value chains.

Consider the electric vehicle sector. China has emerged as a leader spanning inputs, assembly, and recycling. Meanwhile, African producers are seeking to retain greater value from mineral processing. Latin America is striking a growing number of sector-specific arrangements—often regulation-focused and non-binding—to position itself as another key supplier to the sector. 

At the same time, we have seen policy-driven increases in trade costs and a sharp increase in policy uncertainty. These are particularly burdensome for marginalized regions that lack an established track record of hosting multinational production. As the report's GVC readiness diagnostics highlight, these regions already have existing structural impediments to overcome, such as digital infrastructure gaps, institutional bottlenecks, and logistics constraints. The report also emphasizes an additional problem, particularly for smaller exporting firms: persistent shortages of trade finance - estimated above one trillion US dollars annually. Such factors add up and are a major reason why the report finds that the ongoing rewiring of GVCs has mostly benefited countries that were already established as suppliers.

If GVCs are to become more deconcentrated, diversified, and resilient, we need to be more creative about overcoming such obstacles. And the report contains valuable lessons in this regard. It shows that governance cooperation has continued, though less in the form of traditional bilateral and regional agreements, than via more informal, often non-binding, issue-specific frameworks. For instance, the report identifies more than 180 targeted trade deals with a focus on digital trade and critical minerals signed as of 2024. These arrangements can help build trust and predictability in the new governance landscape. Delivering new WTO frameworks, like our plurilateral Agreement on Investment Facilitation for Development, would be of immense value here.

The report sheds light on issues at the heart of current trade tensions. There is new empirical work to illustrate how industrial policy impacts propagate through upstream and downstream linkages, creating both positive learning externalities and negative displacement or overcapacity risks when effects spill over across borders. 

In conclusion, the report shows that the global trading system continues to connect people and businesses across the globe. The report itself is made in the world, it brings together contributions from more than 60 scholars—it really draws from a wide variety and it's very interesting how they bring the different perspectives into being.  

Speech delivered by WTO Director General NGOZI OKONJO-IWELA during the launch of 2025 Global Value Chain Development Report