Trade
Imports, exports and Nepal's borders.
The long view Nepal's LDC graduation
Nepal GDP grew 4% in Q4 2025/26, but Bhote Koshi floods cloud 2026/27
Electricity led growth in the last quarter of 2025/26. The Bhote Koshi floods have since disrupted power output, a border crossing and the state's budget.
Nepal floods choke Dashain goat supply as Kathmandu meat prices climb
Blocked highways, a closed Tibetan border route and a state trader sitting out the season have left Kathmandu's festival meat market short and pricier.
Beni-Jomsom road reopens as late-monsoon rain batters Nepal's paddy and sugarcane
Containers stranded in Mustang for two weeks are moving again, but soaked harvests across the breadbasket show how exposed Nepal's supply lines and farm incomes remain.
Nepal's nominees for India and China pitch an economic agenda to lawmakers
At their parliamentary hearings, Pandey and Sharma put investment, power trade, tourism and transit at the centre of their plans. Investors should weigh what was promised and what remains open.
Budhi Gandaki flood: disaster chief credits SMS alerts as hydropower sites are hit
No deaths were confirmed after a flash flood tore through Gorkha on 11 October 2026, and officials credit text warnings. But bridges, river gauges and two hydropower sites were lost, and the cause is still unclear.
Nepal's revenue rises 16% but trails target as the flood squeezes northern trade
The government collected Rs 184.58bn in the first two months of 2026/27, against a target of Rs 214.81bn. Last year it met 83.5% of its revenue goal; this year's is Rs 1.58 trillion.
Nepal and the US move to extend the MCC compact by a year as its power line runs late
The first 18 km of the $550m US grant programme is built. The rest of the 315 km line is on contracts that run beyond the August 2028 deadline, so Kathmandu wants more time.
Nepal's inflation nears 6%, and the figures predate the flood
Consumer prices rose 5.96% in the year to mid-August, more than triple the rate a year earlier. Cooking oil, fruit and transport led, and wholesale prices rose faster still.
Nepal grows prized coffee for Europe and Japan, but imports 29 times as much as it sells
Customs data show Rs 1.85bn of coffee imports against Rs 72m of exports in nine months. Most of the bill is instant coffee, while home-grown beans struggle on price.
Yarsagumba prices fall by half as Nepal's herb trade shifts to humbler plants
Bulk prices for the caterpillar fungus have slid from Rs 3.2m a kilo before the pandemic, and harvests keep shrinking. Lowland herbs sold to India are growing instead.
Nepal's drugmakers run at a third of capacity, caught between cheap imports and capped prices
Domestic producers supply about half the country's medicines. Raw material costs have soared, the regulator has refused a price rise, and producers want imports of locally made drugs stopped.
A US paperwork rule stalls Nepal's carpet exports to their biggest market
Since 8 July, American importers must file safety certificates electronically at entry. Nepali exporters say they lack the facilities to comply and have asked for a year's grace.
Nepal's food imports jump 47% in two months, led by edible oil and vegetables
Customs data show farm and food imports of Rs 87.1bn from mid-July to mid-September. Grain purchases fell, but edible oil and vegetables surged.
Nepal's tea exports fell 15% after India's testing rules left tonnes stuck at the border
Two months of mandatory laboratory checks closed factories in Ilam and Jhapa. India has eased the rules, but growers who sell nine-tenths of their orthodox tea there are wary.
Black cardamom earns Nepal a record Rs 12.6bn as the new crop opens at a higher price
The spice became Nepal's second-largest export last year on price rather than volume. Almost all of it still goes to India unprocessed, and farmers keep a small share of the value.
Indian fertiliser reaches Nepal for wheat after a paddy season of empty depots
Rail consignments of urea and DAP from a 60,000-tonne government deal are arriving at Birgunj, after farmers queued at empty depots for fertiliser during rice planting.
Over a third of Nepal's 960MW solar tender has yet to break ground
Developers bid as low as Rs 4.99 a unit when the dollar cost Rs 135. With the dollar near Rs 154 and a licensing dispute over land, 346MW of projects is stuck.
A 400kV line begun in 2013 is about to be charged as ADB lines up private grid builders
The Hetauda-Dhalkebar link should raise east-west transfer capacity from about 300MW to 2,000MW. ADB will help the NEA tender a second 400kV line and battery storage to private investors.
Freight trains reach Biratnagar as Nepal's only passenger railway keeps losing money
A direct container service from Kolkata opened a second rail gateway for Nepali importers in July. In Madhesh, the Jaynagar line inches towards Bardibas while its operator runs deficits.
Nepal's power utility lifted sales by 18%, but currency losses cut its profit by 59%
The Nepal Electricity Authority's pre-tax profit fell to about Rs 5bn in 2025/26 as currency losses on its obligations nearly quadrupled, even though sales rose 18%.
Nepal's motorcycle market reaches a four-year high, and four in five are assembled at home
Imports of motorcycles and scooters rose 30% last fiscal year to 277,291 units, most as kits for local plants, and the new year has started at a similar pace with electric scooters gaining.
India's EU trade deal nears signature, and Nepal's export edge in Europe shrinks with it
Indian garments, carpets and pashmina are set to enter the EU duty-free from as early as 2027, wiping out the tariff margin that has kept Nepal's small European trade alive.
A delay in LDC graduation is not a reprieve for Nepali business
Whether Nepal graduates next month or in 2029, its exporters will keep their access to rich markets only by meeting standards most have not yet tried to meet.
Nepal cannot keep exporting its young people as its main growth strategy
Remittances now exceed the national budget. That is a measure of failure at home as much as success abroad.
LDC graduation: what Nepal's exporters stand to lose, and when
Nepal is due to leave the UN's least developed country group on 24 November and has asked to wait until 2029. Here is what changes in Europe, Britain and beyond, for whom, and on what timetable.
Nepal approves billions in foreign investment each year, but less than a third has ever arrived
Approvals fell for a second year in 2025/26 while actual inflows more than doubled, yet central bank data covering three decades show that most of the capital Nepal approves never crosses the border.
Nepal's Rs 2.12 trillion budget explained: the spending record it must beat, and a flood it did not plan for
Nepal's largest budget bets on tax reform and 7% growth, but the state spent less than half its capital allocation last year, and a Rs 559bn flood reconstruction plan now sits on top.
Why a dollar costs about Rs 155: Nepal's 1.6 peg to the Indian rupee explained
Nepal's currency moves with India's, which has weakened this year, and the arrangement brings stability at the cost of monetary independence.
Gold climbs to Rs 295,700 a tola, still below January's record
Bullion is costly again ahead of the festival season, and higher import duty has added to the price Nepalis pay.
Nepal's electric car boom meets a new tax regime
Electric cars dominate new sales in a country that imports all its fuel. A value-based levy introduced in May may decide whether that lasts.
Nepal's Rs 1.78trn trade gap and the narrow road to China
Nepal buys more than six rupees of goods for every one it sells. The August flood has shown how fragile its alternative to India is.
Nepal's two new international airports are still waiting for international flights
Pokhara has its first daily foreign service, nearly four years after opening. Bhairahawa has had none since March. Both have bills to pay.
A decade in, Nepal's Fast Track expressway is half built and still has no agreed starting point
The army-built road meant to bring the Terai within an hour of Kathmandu now has a 2030 deadline, a cost of about Rs 212bn and the same unresolved question over where it begins that it faced in 2018.
Nepal opens its grid to private power traders, at a price they call too high
The regulator's first wheeling charge ends the state utility's monopoly on paper. India's rules and the economics of trading may keep it alive in practice.
Nepal's power exports hit a record, then the flood tested the surplus
Electricity sales to India and Bangladesh earned Rs 29.3bn (about $189m) last year. The August flood has shown how thin the margin behind that number is.
Why Nepal's factories run at less than half their capacity
Cement kilns idle, steel mills lose their Indian market and new factory registrations fall. Manufacturing now makes up less than 6% of the economy.
Nepal's IT exports near $1bn, but the official books record a fraction
Software firms and freelancers now earn more abroad than many of the country's goods exporters, yet most of the money arrives labelled as remittance.
Indian visitors pay by phone in Nepal; Nepalis in India still cannot
QR codes have become Nepal's most-used digital payment, and Indian tourists are using them everywhere from temples to tills, but the reverse link remains unfinished.
South Asia's priciest tank: how the Gulf war reached Nepal's pumps
Nepal imports every litre of fuel through India. When Hormuz closed, Kathmandu paid more than anyone in the region.
The Rasuwa flood that switched off a tenth of Nepal's power
A surge from Tibet wrecked hydropower plants, cut the main China trade route and cost Nepal a growth forecast.
Nepal's workers sent home more in one month than the state invested in a year
Remittances reached Rs 2.36 trillion ($16.19bn) in 2025/26, more than the national budget, while capital spending fell below half its target and private credit stayed weak.
Akshay Golyan takes the chair at one of Nepal's biggest exporters
The 37-year-old heir now runs a group behind close to a tenth of Nepal's exports, a freshly listed yarn maker priced at 141 times earnings and a 700 MW hydropower ambition.
Giri Bandhu Tea Estate: the Jhapa land swap Nepal's Supreme Court annulled, and what came after
A 1964 exemption let a Jhapa tea estate keep land far above Nepal's legal ceiling. The Supreme Court annulled a 2021 cabinet decision letting it swap that land, but its order to reclaim surplus land had not been carried out by May 2026.
Nepal's oldest industrial house and the court cases facing its chairman, Shekhar Golchha
The Golchha family's roots go back to Nepal's first factory. Its chairman, a former FNCCI president, is now a defendant in insurance and money-laundering cases linked to Himalayan Reinsurance. He denies wrongdoing and is on bail.
Shesh Ghale and Jamuna Gurung slip to 150th on Australia's rich list
The couple behind the Melbourne Institute of Technology have made Australia's rich list for 18 straight years, but have slid from around 80th as their Kathmandu hotel, begun in 2014, finally nears opening.
Remittance money meets inflation as Nepal shops for Dashain
Record transfers from abroad should make this the biggest festival season yet. Prices, a closed China border and nervous shoppers are getting in the way.