From Evidence to Policy Supporting Nepal’s Trade Integration Strategy : Designing Institutions to Promote Trade and Investment in Nepal

Gomez Mera, Laura

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: trade policy;    investment;    trade facilitation;    trade promotion;   

RP-ID  :  106832

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

As a small, landlocked economy, Nepal’sdevelopment prospects are closely tied to its ability toincrease integration in the regional and global marketplace.Despite significant changes in Nepal’s trade sector over thepast decade, the country’s export performance has remainedpoor, with exports growing at a much slower pace thanimports. Nepal’s external vulnerability is deepened by itsdependence on remittances to finance growing tradedeficits.Achieving greater integration in the global economyand building a competitive export sector will requireovercoming various economic and institutional challenges.This paper assesses the performance of these organizationsin their role of promoting exports and investment.It hastwo main objectives. First, we describe the main export andinvestment promotion institutions in Nepal and examine theirmandates, missions, and the services they offer.Second, welook at international best practices in export andinvestment promotion, to identify cost effective approachesappropriate for small developing countries. Based on this,we provide a number of recommendations for strengthening andimproving the role of export and investment supportorganizations and initiatives in Nepal, as well as the levelof coordination and cooperation among them. The report isorganized as follows. In the next section, we briefly reviewthe economic rationale for public intervention in thepromotion of exports and investment and summarize the mainfindings of the literature regarding the most effectiveinstitutional designs and practices. We also discuss thearguments for and against a merger of the two activitieswithin a single institution. Section three describes andassesses the institutional framework for export andinvestment promotion in Nepal. In Section four, we examinefour case studies of “best practices” in the promotion ofexports and export-oriented investment –Costa Rica, Jamaica,Colombia, and Latvia. We also discuss examples of successfulpromotion and development of the links between the tourismsector and exports, Mauritius, which offers some lessons forthe case of Nepal. The final section contains the policy recommendations.