The Economic Affairs Committee of the National Council presented the review of the Economic Development Policy (EDP), 2010 to the House. The review circled mostly on the rural people who comprise majority of the population being excluded while formulating the Policy.
One of the Committee members said while the Policy might have been drafted after holding wide stakeholder consultations, the largest stakeholders, who were rural people had been excluded. This, he said could have been due to lack of organisation among the people to voice their concerns and priorities.
Therefore, the Committee recommends that for the Policy to be considered as a national policy document for developing private sector in the country, the Policy must include a comprehensive section on rural enterprise development.
The Committee reviewed that the Policy must set out clear goals, objectives and strategies in line with the philosophy of Gross National Happiness.
The Committee recommended that the Policy should set meaningful outcome targets such as poverty reduction and improvement in Human Development Index rankings rather than aggregate and abstract concepts like self reliance and Gross Domestic Product growth rates.
On fiscal incentives like tax holidays and import duty waivers to enterprises, the Committee is of the opinion that such incentives while benefitting the entrepreneur should also benefit the government and the society.
On monitoring implementation of the Policy, the Committee said from the election point of view, target year 2020 is beyond the term of the government. Therefore they said it would be meaningful to set short or midterm goals that the government seeks to attain by 2013.
The Economic Development Policy was launched in March this year.
