On December 21, 2019 (Saturday) Pokhara Research Centre (PRC) organized a “Roundtable Discussion” a forum for sharing insights and experience on the topic “Doing business in Pokhara” at 8:30 a.m.-10:00a.m. at City Square Banquet, Newroad Pokhara..
In the context of federalism, the public service delivery has come to the government nearest to the people, in this context local government has to offer maximum services to the people. In this regard, PRC recently completed a research paper on “Registering business enterprise on Pokhara Metropolitan City” which studied about cost, time and procedure to register business and provisions regarding various regulatory barriers. The research looked after various difficulties faced by an entrepreneur while registering his business in PMC.
During the program Entrepreneur, academician, bureaucrats, youth enthusiasts, journalist were present.
Ashok Khadka a young entrepreneur who is doing business of water talked about the problems he faces while registering his business of drinking water in PMC. “I have to register the same business in different government authority to get the permission and pay different taxes as permission fee which put me into financial burden before starting my venture said Mr. Khadka.
Pradeep Pahari a banker by profession shared about the requirements of the bank while financing the ventures. He opined that policies are ambiguous which put entrepreneur into a real problem while doing their businesses. Policies should be understandable so that any citizen could start their business and financed properly on their own. Due to various requirements of Nepal Rastra Bank and other government authorities some time sanctioned loan could not be disbursed due to policy change at the last moment said Mr. Pahari.
Similarly, Madan Regmi a economist lecturer from Prithivi Narayan Campus talked about contribution of business in the GDP and importance of free market to the economic health of the country. He said that, “Demand and supply determines the market of any product, any entrepreneur seeing the opportunity (i.e. demand and supply gaps) jumps to do business in the hope of making a profit, but hurdles in the policies create a environment of monopoly which is favorable condition for the establish player of the market, this impede the new entry and competitiveness of the market, but competitiveness is a very nature of the open market system; so this should be addressed by the policy maker.
Similarly, other present participants share their experience and issues during the networking and informal session at the end of the program. The program began with a presentation of Mr. Sujan Regmi– Executive Director/Research Coordinator on their recently done research paper.
