ICYMI: Here are our top stories from Wednesday, January 8
Here are some of the stories from The Kathmandu Post ( January 8, 2020) Palm oil, which is not produced in Nepal, once again shot to the top of the list of shipments to India. Shutterstock
Here are some of the stories from The Kathmandu Post ( January 8, 2020)
With the export of everything else falling, palm oil rises to the top
Export earnings from high-value products identified by the Nepal Trade Integration Strategy fell 6 percent year-on-year to Rs14.8 billion in the first five months of the current fiscal year as a smaller inventory and increased domestic consumption constricted foreign sales.
A slowing Indian economy could further hurt Nepal’s exports as the southern neighbour remains the largest buyer of Nepali goods, say experts.
Tourism Minister’s Visit Nepal rally in Sydney condemned for being insensitive and inappropriate
Massive bushfires are currently raging across Australia, engulfing millions of hectares of land. At least 24 people have been killed and millions of animals feared dead while thousands of people are being evacuated to safer locations.
Amid this apocalyptic scenario, Nepal’s tourism minister Yogesh Bhattarai, on Tuesday, inaugurated the Visit Nepal 2020 campaign in Sydney, the capital of Australia’s New South Wales, where the brunt of the fires is.
Provincial leaders balk at ruling party’s directive to name Province 3 ‘Bagmati’
Province 3 Assembly members from the ruling Nepal Communist Party have warned the party leadership against any attempts to impose decisions on them in clear violation of the spirit of federalism.
The assembly members, particularly from the districts Dolakha, Kavre, Sindhupalchok, Dhading, Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur have taken particular issue with the party’s December 29 order to name Province 3 ‘Bagmati’ and continue with Hetauda as its capital. Hetauda was designated the temporary capital in January 2018.
Three years on, ambitious school programme fails to meet a majority of targets
The School Sector Development Programme, started in 2016 to boost the quality of education and promote equitable access to students, has failed to meet a majority of the targets it had set to achieve by last fiscal year.
An assessment by a joint review meeting of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and donor agencies shows the achievement of the project is significantly lower than what it was supposed to attain three years after the programme started. The assessment shows a lackadaisical approach of the Nepal government as one of the major constraints in achieving the goals. During the inception of the programme, the government had, in principle, committed to increasing the share of education budget to 15 percent of the national budget.
As city declutters utility poles, some neighbourhoods are left with blocked streets and disrupted services
Besides potholes, pollution and traffic jams, another thing Kathmandu could do without is clusters of tangled wires hanging on utility poles.
While Ishwor Man Dangol, spokesperson for the Kathmandu Metropolitan City, claims that the city office has been managing these cable snarls for the past two years, not much of an improvement has been seen so far.
9.89°C Kathmandu
