Policies being formulated to streamline domestic trade

KATHMANDU, MAR 07 -

The government has been working on four policies with the aim of fostering a competitive environment for business, increasing efficiency in internal trade and protecting the rights of consumers and producers.

The four draft policies are Internal or Domestic Trade, Price Monitoring, Consumer Protection and a guideline to implement the Competition Promotion and Market Protection Act.  “Drafts of all these policies have almost been finalized, and we are discussing them extensively with the stakeholders concerned before sending them to the Cabinet for its approval,” said Deepak Subedi, spokesperson at the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies

As Nepal does not have any policy to promote domestic market and goods, the Internal Trade policy will help to ensure effective distribution and mobilization of locally manufactured products. The policy aims to improve the business environment and expand the roles of the government and the private sector in trade and investment promotion. “For this, the policy will recognize products and markets and encourage private sector partnership in implementing various activities.”

It will also help the government to collect statistics on what potential a certain district holds and where its products can be marketed.

Meanwhile, the Price Monitoring policy will help the government to prepare a certain standard for regulating prices. “As we are guided by market-driven principles of liberalization, we cannot fully control market prices.

However, we can enforce some set of standards on how much profit is reasonable for any trade r on certain goods,” said Subedi.  

The policy will enable the government to analyze the price situation and give advance feedback to take preventive measures to help policy interventions at appropriate times to prevent haphazard or unilateral hikes in commodity prices.

Likewise, the Consumer Protection policy aims to protect the interests of consumers amid growing unfair business practices such as price fixing, speculative hoarding and black marketing.  

The policy will help the government to keep prices under control and also implement commodity-specific market intervention schemes to give temporary relief to consumers whenever the market sees a shortage of goods.  

The proposed guideline to implement the Competition Promotion and Market Protection Act is aimed at controlling black marketing and artificial price hikes to foster a competitive environment for business.

Source: The Kathmandu Post