400 thousands loses jobs as economy bleeds

Kathmandu January 13- Around 2,200 factories have stopped operations and more than 400,000 people have been rendered jobless in the southern plains in the last five months, thanks to the prolonged Tarai unrest, Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) said on Tuesday. 

The Tarai region is considered as the industrial heartland of Nepal, as 70 percent of manufacturing factories are located there.  The protests that have continued for 150 days have severely hurt country’s economy, said Saurav Jyoti, chairperson of tax and revenue committee of the FNCCI at an interaction here. 

According to a report of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), one day of industrial closure causes losses worth Rs1.8 billion. Going by the NRB statistics, the cumulative losses faced by the private sector have crossed Rs 300 billion. 

“The country’s economy is in a free-fall mode,” Jyoti said. Shanker Prasad Pandeya, chairperson of bank, finance and insurance committee of the FNCCI, said that the contribution of industries to Nepal’s GDP has fallen down in the recent years. Likewise, the industrial sector is likely to witness a negative growth rate of 2.5 percent since the problem emerged in the Tarai region, according to NRB.