Kathmandu: An utterly confused Nepali population including students belonging to the financial discipline gets more confused when they listen to the nitty-gritty’s of the World Trade Organization at Katmandu’s never ending seminars on the said topic.

More confused visibly seems the congress led establishment and the salaried bureaucrats at the National Planning Commission working under it which till today talks of providing some special concessions to the least developed countries like Nepal for easy access to the WTO membership. The fact is that the people have been given to understand that the WTO membership for this country was already round the corner, which in essence is not. The utterly lethargic NPC members themselves admit that it could consume some more time.

The government which in effect should have thought of informing the people regarding the internal dynamics and the tangible benefits that would accrue from Nepal’s membership at the WTO, but instead it is some scholarly organizations, for example, the NEFAS, which has remained instrumental in disseminating the ABCDs of the WTO process. Two events go to the credit of the NEFAS which at least gave opportunity to the confused scholars to understand the primaries of the WTO arrangement.

Speaking at a NEFAS program on WTO, Globalization and Nepal, Monday afternoon, the executive director at the NEFAS, Anand Shrestha opined that there could be no doubt that Nepal does have a large potential for economic growth provided that prudent use of natural, cultural and human resource is well planned and that Nepal will thus need to raise its efficiency and international competitive edge in both product specialization and diversification.

Robert Kerr, US embassy official expressed his firm conviction that free trade has already been proven to be essential for achieving economic growth and that a recent study, added Robert Kerr, conducted by the WB arrived at a conclusion that the economic performance of globalizing and non-globalizing developing countries were different.

“The study found that in the 1990s, the income per person for globalizing developing countries grew more than 5% per year whereas the non-globalizing countries annual income declined by more than 1 percent per year. (See the full text inside-editor).

Scholar Dr. Narayan Manandhar preferred to look into the negative sides of the WTO membership as well because of late people in various countries have come out with protests. He expressed his doubt over Nepal’s joining WTO arrangement earlier than 2005.

Intellectual Birendra Shrestha scathingly criticised the western nations who dictate the stringent terms and the conditions for WTO membership to smaller countries like Nepal. He however, said that Nepal would have to join the WTO mechanism ultimately.

The “lone expert” on WTO as he is generally treated and invited for practically all the seminars of such sorts, P.R. Legal appeared more confused than the attending participants as it became evident from his appeal to the developed west to offer concessions for smaller countries like ours for the smooth and easy entrance to the world body.

Legal is the NPC vice chairman.

Yet another stalwart of the Panchayat economy turned diplomat, Dr. M.M. Sainju talked on the peripheral matters regarding the WTO arrangement. He however, also failed to talk on the tangible benefits that could accrue from Nepal’s membership at the WTO.

The book entitled WTO, Globalization and Nepal, a NEFAS publication enjoys the financial support of the US embassy.