Economy

Kingdom Nepal is an agricultural land with its predominant semi-feudal system for the development of national economy. So the root economy of the country is definitely agriculture. In 1995 about 80 percentage of the total population was engaged in agriculture and it produce 46 percentage of the GDP. The manufacturing and construction industries were poorly developed, which gave only about 8.4 percentage in the GDP of the country. Nepal has very big reserve of hydro resources in the world - that is above 80,000 MWT, but it has not been used. It had succeeded to harness only 238.3 MWT which is 0.287 percentage of the total hydro potential. The transport is very insufficient. The country has 8,025 km of motor way in which 3,082 km are of black-topped, the reminds are of gravelled and weathered roads. There are only 52 km of rail-way. On the export list of Nepal, the major place is occupied by the lively production, handicraft (like artistic goods, ethereal oils, herbs etc.); and on the import list is mainly manufactured goods. The trade balance of Nepal is characterised with a chronic deficit. The passive balance is obviously growth from 2.8 billion NRs. in 1980 to 19.0 billion in 1991. As a whole the level of economic reforms remains very low. It is caused by the fragmentariness of national economy, presence of semi-feudal survival or anachronism, the insufficient of financial resources and skilled workers (manpower) and the improper management toward the skilled workers.

Kingdom Nepal is an ancient country. It has numerous interesting God gifted natural resources and rich cultural and historical inheritance which are potentially important circumstance for the development of mobile international tourism. The beginning of mass tourist travel to Nepal may accept 1962, when 6.2 thousand tourists are sojourn in the country. Their number increased to 345 thousand (approximately) in 1995 and economically the percentage share of inbond tourism in GDP was the achievement of 3.8 percentage for the year 1992.

Nepal proves to be an attractive center for the development of active tourism with its diverse nature, rich culture, hospitable people, interesting national cuisine and irreproachable services in the hotels. In 1975 the country received 92440 foreign tourist, in 1992 it increased to 334353 tourists, (but being the cause of political recession and environment pollution in 1993 and India's Plague disease in 1994 it decreased to 293567 and 326531 tourists respectively. But in 1995 it increased to 354 thousand, in which 322749 are by air only. Among them 63.51 percents are foreigner and 36.49 percents are Indians.

The total volume of foreign exchange earnings from tourism in the last few years matured from 51.632 million US Dollars in 1980 to 63.701 million US Dollars in 1990 and 88.195 million US Dollars in 1994. The all-in-all volume of foreign exchange earning from tourism for the period of 1980-1994 is increased by 1.71 times i.e. a sheer increment by 1.42% per annum whereas the total volume of tourist flow to Nepal is increase by 2.07 times i.e. a mean increase by 6.2% per annum.

Besides that the average income per tourist decreased from 422.5 US Dollars in 1980 to 339.74 US Dollars in 1994 and the average income per visitor per day got diminished from 38 US Dollars in 1980 to 33.97 US Dollars in 1994. It comes to prove us that the tourism in Nepal is eventually developed by extensive or Budget tourism. On another side the percentage share of the income of convertible foreign exchange from tourist's expenditure decrease from 23.26% in 1980 to 12.36% in 1994 which is not favourable for the entire economic development of Nepal. It shows that the government revenue from Tourism got decreased by 9.77 point during the period of 1980-1994. The percentage share of foreign exchange income in relation to the total "invisible income" is calculated as 42.67% in 1994 which made tourism the second big resources of "invisible income" for the country.