ICYMI: Finance Minister’s Address at 10th NewBiz Conclave & Business Excellence Awards 2026

Note: The address is available on our YouTube channel, through which the event was broadcast live.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I will be brief because of competing demands, and you know I am rushing from one occasion to the other. But, it's a real pleasure to join this conclave. I think a bit of nostalgia there. I think the second conclave I attended in 2014, after I joined public life in Nepal. I was a humble member of the planning commission at the time, and Mr. Lamsal was kind enough to invite me to address the business community at the time, it was, I think, the same location, that is, Solti Hotel. And I miss Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat, who was the chief guest and the then finance minister. Many in my generation, in the field of public policy and economics, look up to him for the great risks that he took as a policymaker, and the great strides that he made as an elected official. 

As an elected politician, we're trying to follow in his footsteps to some extent. Times have changed, but to some extent, at least in the reform ethos that he carried at a time when much of the country needed heavy convincing on the need to, you know, open up, engage the world, be friendly to the private sector, attract investment, create jobs, and go on a much higher growth trajectory than what Nepal was used to before the 1990s. So that spirit, I think, we carry. But, the times, as I said, have changed. It's a global era. The digital industry has evolved. The nature of the economy has changed. Geopolitics looms large in everything that we do, and many of the values and the institutions that were set up in the middle of the 20th century also are now ripe for a reset or an overhaul. So, it presents both an opportunity and a challenge, you know, for folks like us who spent almost 20 years abroad, getting used to the global rules of the game, suddenly find that those rules of the game are no longer valid. And, I think I gave an interview about two years ago, kind of forecasting where the RSP, the Rastriya Swatantra Party, would be in about four years. So we were drawing and preparing for the 2027 elections. The Gen-Z uprising was a surprise to almost all of us. But, I had predicted that the demography, first D; the second D was digitalisation; and the third D was diaspora. These three forces are going to combine in such a way that a potent force for change would emerge. So that's what we had foreseen. But the Gen-Z intervention pre-poned what we had been planning for in 2027. So, an amazing opportunity has opened up for Nepali society to undertake bold reforms. And, it is in this quest that we, you know, seek your help, your guidance, and your partnership, because as I've said on many occasions, as we prepare for the forthcoming budget, the public expenditure share is actually quite modest. It's about 20 Kharab on average this year. You know, projecting a nominal growth of about 10–12%. But the economy is much larger, right? We're talking about 66 Kharba this year. We hope it will end up with 74 Kharba. But, in dollar terms, we're looking at $15 billion in public expenditures and trying to spend in such a way that we can motivate and excite the rest of the economy, which is about $50 billion. So that's the ambition that we have, and it's also fitting to have Dr Rajiv Kumar here. I hosted him in 2018, again at this hotel, when he was the vice-chair of NITI Aayog. I think we were talking then about the first four years of the Modi government and what India was up to in introducing all these massive reform areas, not just in the economy, but across the social sectors, from regional aviation schemes like UDAN, which I still remember, to the massive health care, health insurance schemes, Atal Tinkering Labs, and everything else you know, the whole digital public infrastructure that India was building upon. And I think those were still early days, but you were able to outline the grand vision of a reform-oriented government in India, which serves as an inspiration to many of us in the kind of ambition that we need to cultivate right here in Nepal. But it was also heartening to hear Dr. Kumar saying maybe Nepal can show the way in some areas, right? So Nepal is rightly sized in terms of its population, as its economy can experiment with so many things that larger countries may not be able to do, and so, successes which other countries can emulate. We've actually shown some areas where Nepal has done well. Community forestry is often cited as one, community-based radio, etc., used to be cited in the 90's, but I don't think those successes have been too durable. Times have changed. But yes, in areas of conservation and elsewhere, in social mobilization on the more social political aspects, Nepal has been fairly progressive. But the area where we lag is the economy, and that's really the focus of the new government, and that's where we are trying to really inspire confidence in the economy, issue incentives, reform in a way that we can, as the theme of this convocation is the reset, many of the economic incentives in Nepal. So we're working in good faith and going forward. A few days ago, I mentioned, in the presence of another illustrious Indian policymaker, I think, Amitabh Kant, who was visiting. I said in 2015, India's per capita income was about $1,500 per person. Nepal is exactly at that moment right now. So in per capita terms, we're almost a decade behind India, but the reform spirit that the new Modi government carried in 2014-2015 is kind of comparable to what we're trying to do now, right? We have set very high standards on integrity; it starts from the top. We hope we'll be able to assemble a good talent pool to lead many of our institutions and this different path, this nudge of the Titanic, right? That's which I've used as a metaphor, steer it in a different direction. But even a small nudge, a gentle nudge, after a while, will lead that Titanic in a completely different direction. But if we can't manage it, we will sink, just like the Titanic. So stakes are very high, and the sense of history is dawning on us as we govern and try to take this country forward. It's just been a month, but many people have told me that the speed and the ambition with which the government is moving have been quite remarkable, and I'm sure we've made mistakes, but there are very few who have doubted our intent, and it's probably a South Asian cultural trait. As long as the intentions are noble, I think the people are forgiving enough to say that these guys mean well. So let's stand behind them and give them a chance. So we are benefiting from what is called the benefit of doubt, vishwas ko labh or shanka ko labh, and that's what we're trying to ride on over the next two or three months. The budget is forthcoming; we will hopefully announce things that will be liked by the business community and will reset the economic trajectory path.

The most important aspect in an economy is the overall confidence on the part of producers, on the part of consumers, and that's what we're trying to rekindle here in Nepal. I know there have been whispers and murmurs, and, you know, even conspiracy theories on whether the government, you know, has a dark, secret list of people that it wants to target and punish, and all that. I can assure you that no such thing exists. Many of the actions that you witnessed over the last month have actually been results of painstaking investigations by governments that have come before us. It's just that, for perverse reasons, they were buried, they were sidelined, and they were quashed. We will follow the rule of law; we will enforce the law of the land, and that's what we've been doing. Once these reports, legitimately prepared by competent agencies, land on our desk, it would be tantamount to a dereliction of duty not to act, and that's what we've done. So, please be assured that, on the whole, we want to, you know, nurture a very healthy relationship with the business community because that ambition to reach the $100 billion dollar mark over the next 7 to 10 years in nominal terms requires the participation of the private sector. So, we will again, to use the nudge metaphor, we will provide that nudge; we will provide the right incentives, but it's the private sector and the business community that has to join hands with the government to take the economy forward, and that's what we're aiming at, and I hope you will, you know, partner with us in this. 

After the budget, I hope to, you know, engage much more deeply with this community and look at where the pressure points are, what the constraints are. The economy has not been functioning well over the last 7 to 8 years, and that has been worsened by all these external adversities, shocks, you know, after the earthquake, the blockade, and then the COVID, and the sequence of wars that we've seen in Eastern Europe as well as in the Middle East. So, against all that adversity, we want to carve our own niche, find our own Nepali path to higher growth, and that's what we're seeking to do. A lot of the vision and the political economic reforms, the direction we want to take, the destination we want to reach is amply laid out in our manifesto. Many people say, "Oh, what is the government thinking?" It's all there. There's no secret; it's all been out there, and, in fact, we are, we want to stay faithful to what we said we would do. And we believe that the heavy, unprecedented mandate the people of Nepal gave us in the last elections was an endorsement of our manifesto. So, if you are under any confusion, any doubt on what the RSP government will do, just read our manifesto again, and that's, you know, we will be as faithful as we can to both the letter and the spirit of the manifesto, and that's where we're headed. But very generally, and I'll end with this. There are five areas that we are prioritizing. It's again in the manifesto, but we will re-emphasize it on Monday when the Right Honorable President addresses the joint houses of Parliament in his annual Niti Tatha Karyakram speech. A few days after that, I will lay out the principles and priorities of the forthcoming budget, and in about three weeks, I will announce the budget itself on May 29. 

Five areas around which we want to cluster our priorities: the first one is good governance, and we want to ensure that the people of Nepal avail of the dividends of good governance. This has been very rare in Nepal, and the baby steps that you've seen outlined in the 100 measures of governance, etc., are all aimed at making life easier for the common citizen, simplifying procedures, plugging loopholes, reducing discretion on the part of bureaucrats and politicians, so there's no, there's no leeway for rent-seeking and corruption, etc. So that's the direction we're heading in. So this Sushasan ko Labhansha, the dividend of good governance. You can look at it in macro terms. Lot of the policies and institutions that were captured by these very nefarious groups and organized, I don't wanna say mafia, but it's almost similar, akin to that. And they had taken a tight grip over our financial system, even our political leadership, political parties and many of our civil institutions. So it was a very, very dangerous point that Nepal was reaching, and, again, I can't thank the Gen Z-intervention enough for stopping us from falling into that abyss of mal-governance. It was a classic kleptocracy that we were walking into, and that fortunately has been stopped. So we want to ensure that none of that is repeated ever again in Nepal, and we want to ensure that the legislative changes, the legal changes, and the institutional reforms stop a wholesale capture of our political economy in the days ahead. So many of our reforms that you've seen or are in the pipeline are aimed at stopping this sort of wholesale capture of institutions. At a micro level, we want to make life simpler for Nepali people, and that's through the lens of digitalization. So, may an average citizen be able to access services without ever having to stay in line, without ever having to pay a single rupee to a bureaucrat or service provider. So that's the direction we're moving in on good governance. 

The second is, of course, restructuring the economy. Here, a lot needs to be done. A series of missteps, perhaps some of our own making, some externally imposed, the economic incentives have been completely distorted. We are a country which is the most dependent on remittances in the world for a fairly populous country, right? So there are small countries like Samoa, Andorra, and Vanuatu, you know, that may be more dependent than us when you express remittance inflows as a share of GDP. But for a fairly populous country, like take any country that's more than five or 10 million people, Nepal's dependence on remittances is the highest. So, it's been helpful to reduce poverty. It's been helpful to cushion livelihoods when the government was largely absent, but that's not a sustainable path to a middle-income status, and we need to reorient the structure of the economy so that many of these young people would return, would be able to do business and lead an honest life right here in Nepal, and not leave the country in despair, which was what was characterizing our national life over the last 15 years. So, we want to reverse that, and that needs a wholesale revamping of the economic structure that propels us on a higher growth path, but that's not enough, right? It has to create decent jobs as well. So that's the second priority. 

Third is connectivity. We want to invest heavily in connecting the country because it's good for the economy, but it's also good for nation formation. It's an almost incomplete exercise in that regard, and on road connectivity, on digital connectivity, on energy connectivity, even on aviation, we could do much more for a landlocked country, and that's an area that we'll re-emphasize, but rather than spending much money from the state exchequer, we want to attract private capital in areas where it would make sense. So, we won’t ask the private sector to go to Jumla and provide public education, free, but in areas where economic incentives are aligned, we will encourage the advent of private capital, both domestic, diasporic, and foreign. So that's very much a priority for us. 

The fourth area is, of course, social investments. We need to reduce inequalities of opportunity, and this is education, health, nutrition, access to financial services, a more unified and affordable social security package for all our people, and that's an area we'll work heavily towards. 

The fifth one is our expansion of soft power. So that we see through mobilizing the diasporic strength, but also, you know, taking our whole tourism, culture, and heritage and all that richness, giving its due, and you know, attracting investment and making sure that it contributes a much, much larger share of the economy going forward. 

So, सुशासनको लाभांश, अर्थतन्त्रको पुनर्संरचना, असमानता घटाउनको लागि सामाजिक लगानी, सन्निकटताका लागि पूर्वाधार निर्माण र नेपालको सौम्यशक्तिको विस्तार। 

These are the key themes that this government promised to the Nepali people, and this is what we will act upon in the next… certainly in the budget, but in all our immediate priorities over the next year or two.

And, if we feel that the people are benefiting from this agenda, if we feel that we're gaining traction and seeing early results, then we will double down on these priorities and maybe expand to slightly more ambitious goals. And all that. 

So again, thank you so much for indulging me, and, good to see many familiar faces. But, the business community, the private sector, must rest assured that this is a government that is here to support you, bolster you, unlock a lot of your hurdles. It may take time in some areas; you know, changing of laws, changing of business practices will take time, but the intent is there. The stated goals are quite transparent, and you've seen the sort of reformed work culture that has been communicated right from the top. Very high standards of integrity, changed practices, culture, and sourcing of talent wherever it exists to help Nepal advance in an era when many of the challenges are beyond our control, right from climate change, geopolitics, demographic pressures, etc.. So navigating a path that is sustainable, that draws in the confidence of the people, is a challenge, but I think we signed up for this. And, at least in the last elections, you endorsed what we said we would do, and we want to execute that vision faithfully. And again, I end by asking for all your support and help. And I congratulate Madan ji and his team for pulling this off. So this is the 10th conclave, right? So keep going, keep assembling all these brilliant minds, but do invest, create jobs, fill up the exchequer, and let's make something out of this amazing country called Nepal. Thank you so much.