From: www.sukulgunda.com
US$ 22 Billion Debt!
As usual, our government struggles to collect enough tax revenue each year, and we can't seem to find much dough for our basic development projects. According to our media reports, our national debt will reach US$ 22 billion by the end of the fiscal year 2026-2027.
We started the last fiscal year with US$20 billion in debt, and we will be adding another US$2.2 billion this year to manage our budget. Our public debt is around 45% of our GDP now. According to our data, the government managed to collect US$9.33 billion in actual revenue while our expenses were around US$12 billion during the last fiscal year. And we need fresh loans to pay off the interest on our domestic and foreign loans each year.
Our foreign debt stands at US$12 billion, while we owe our local banks around US$10 billion. We managed to borrow US$2.7 billion from our domestic markets, while much cheaper foreign loans are shrinking each year to only US$ 665 million this year. It seems that we need around US$ 3 billion a year to pay the principal and interest on our national debt. That's like almost 6% of our GDP just to pay rent on borrowed money.
I think it's time we do something to cut down our imports. We import almost everything from fuel to even incense sticks and playing cards! While we export young minds all over the world, we here at home spend all the money on food and cool gadgets, and that is not going to fix the import crisis. Maybe it's time we slash taxes on industrial machinery and agricultural tools while raising the tax on Kit-Kats and Pringles and many foreign consumables!
It's time to provide zero taxes on electric vehicles and make the fuel-guzzling SUVS far more expensive than Singapore! It's time we rethink our energy exports from being a seasonal exporter to a year-round exporter of clean energy to India and Bangladesh. We need massive pumped-storage hydropower plants so that we can sell peak summer electricity at premium rates. It's time to invite Norway and other EU nations to fund our massive hydropower projects instead of the Indians who just do nothing but take the license and spend decades doing nothing!
We can invite the Dutch to improve our agricultural sector, and maybe they can help us export agricultural goods worth billions of dollars someday to the rich Gulf nations! We cannot build a new smartphone, but we can focus on IT and software engineering by providing tax breaks on foreign and domestic tech startups. We could be a goldmine for cheap, elite tech talent, and that could help us easily generate a few billion dollars each year.
It seems that most of the backpackers who come to Nepal spend less than US$15 per day. It's time we move towards ultra-luxury wellness retreats, and maybe exclusive Himalayan spiritual tourism by targeting the rich Chinese, Indians, and the Sheikhs from the Gulf! That could bring in a few billion dollars annually.
Maybe it's time to legalize marijuana and help to export billions of dollars worth of medicinal marijuana to the West. Of course, we need to regulate it and not let it run wild, or we will face the same problems Thailand faced when they decided to legalize it.
We may be a land-locked country with a bully chimeki, but that doesn't mean we can't rise again by focusing on clean energy infrastructure and digital exports. The government should stop focusing on how to tax us more but open the markets for foreign investment so that some of us will be paid fair wages, consumers will be able to buy goods at reasonable costs, and these 33 mafia business houses will, for once, start paying fair wages and not sell us adulterated goods and evade taxes and send their illegal wealth to Dubai!
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