Every Nepali aspires to live a life of prosperity and happiness. Coming out of extreme poverty has been the life-long goal of millions of people. For this, every successive government rolled out the poverty alleviation programmes with the support of international financial institutions. There have been modest gains from the poverty-reduction schemes implemented for more than three decades. However, Nepal’s fight against poverty and social inequalities has often hit a snag due to political instability. Despite having good constitutional provisions, the political leaders are yet to translate them into reality. The nation is still striving hard to attain desired economic objectives. Political instability, lack of policy consistency, low budget expenditure in the implementation of development projects, lack of development infrastructures and failure to properly utilise foreign aid and loans, among others, have stood as hindrance to meet the annual development targets.

According to available statistics, around 31.1 per cent of Nepali population lives close to the poverty line while 18 per cent are below it. Moreover, the gradual anti-poverty progress almost went down the tube owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nepal has already endured the first and second waves of the virus pandemic. Its third wave is looming large. The restrictive measures such as lockdown and prohibitory order caused disruption to the economic activities. The growth rate has been reversed and millions of people are likely to fall into abject penury. Last year, the World Bank had warned that nearly one third of population who are just above the poverty line could fall below it due to the loss of livelihood caused by COVID-19. Across all sectors, informal workers or those without social security or assistance will be most prone to falling into extreme poverty, it stated.

Against this background, Finance Minister Janardan Sharma has reiterated that the major programmes of government should focus on creating jobs and reducing poverty. Sharma made this remark at the Annual Review Programme of the Fiscal Year 2020/21 and Development Action Committee organised at the Ministry of Finance the other day. While calling for result-oriented investment in productive sectors, he asked the ministry employees to have information and knowledge about social inequalities and imbalances, which is necessary while formulating programmes and policies. In order to generate employment opportunities, remittances sent by Nepali workers from abroad need to be spent on productive sector. Sadly, however, largest chunk of remittances go in buying the imported consumer items.

In a similar manner, the state-owned corporations need policy and managerial reforms to minimise their losses. Banking and financial institutions operating in villages and municipalities should provide efficient and fast services to the poor people. Speaking at another programme, Minister Sharma also urged the saving and credit cooperatives to invest 60 per cent of their fund in productive sectors. It is indeed pragmatic suggestion in view of the cooperatives’ growing investment in housing, real estate and the purchase of automobiles. This sort of investment is unlikely to build core economy that boosts job, growth and GDP.  Cooperatives have been accused of taking heavy interests while giving loans for the poor. They are also charged of cheating the depositors. Cooperatives are good model of accumulation of capital and the people’s empowerment. It is imperative that they should play a proactive role in enhancing the livelihood conditions of the economically marginalised people.