Various stakeholders have stressed the need to facilitate medium and large investments in the agriculture sector and promote its commercialization to generate significant economic gains for the country and people.

The growth of the farm sector over the last decade has remained very low and investments in the sector have also been very limited, said government officials, commercial bankers, agriculture entrepreneurs and experts while speaking at an interaction jointly hosted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the White Lotus Centre (WLC) last week.

The growth rate of the agriculture sector during the period 2006-15 stood at just 2.9 percent compared to 3.2 percent for industry and 5.3 percent for services, the WLC said in a press release. Investments in the sector by

commercial banks accounted for 7 percent of their total lending in 2015.

Kenichi Yokoyama, Country Director of the ADB for Nepal, called for commercialisation and increased investment in the farm sector. “While there are several technological and knowledge-based barriers limiting this transition, initiatives to encourage medium and large-scale investments in agriculture will give the economy a boost,” he said.

Addressing the event, WLC Managing Director Kapil Tamot said that Nepal as an agriculture-centric economy was not reflected in reality. Farm imports are ever increasing and more than 50 percent of the population

economically involved in the sector are still at the subsistence level.

“The country must move up from subsistence farming by encouraging and facilitating larger agri-financing,” he said.