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How Tourism Can Change
Nepal
It will only be tautological
to say that Nepal has not been able to make desirable headway towards
development despite five decades of planned development. Thailand and South
Korea were in a similar phase of development back in the fifties. In the new
millennium, Nepal finds itself lagging streets behind them. South Korea in
particular has been an example to emulate for the developing countries round the
globe.
The reasons for this state
of affairs are the lack of vision necessary for development. Vision should
appear non-attainable at first glance but should be achievable once the heart
and soul is put into it. India has a vision of being transformed into a
developed nation for which it is seeking to attain a per capita income of
US$1538 by 2020 from the present US$440. The ultimate vision of any country is
certainly attainment of developed status within a fixed period of time.
Countries should identify their core competence areas in which they are strong
and mobilize it for development. India has taken technology at its core
competence. In Nepal, tourism and hydropower are widely recognized as two of the
core competences.
Of these two, tourism could
be a better option because of its soft feature compared to hydropower, which is
of hard nature. For the development of hydropower, it has to be sold to India
and an approach has to be made to donors for financing. But in the case of
tourism, it is possible with private sector investment.
Nepal has a per capita income
of US$244 at present and it can be increased to US$767 after forty-two years if
it can achieve a growth rate of 5 percent every year by restraining the
population growth to 2 percent. With 7, 8, 9 and 10 percent national growth the
per capita can jump to US$1760, US$2650, US$3976 and US$5942. The achievement,
which India is seeking to make by 2020, Nepal can make by 2045 if it can
generate a sustained growth rate of about 6.5 percent a year.
The income
from tourism is US$400 per person at present takes an average stay period of ten
days. If we can attract 500,000 tourists from China in addition to about 400,000
we get every year, less than 0.6 percent of what China gets every year (86
million), we can meet the desired per capita income growth rate very soon. It
may sound impossible but tourism is only the most simplest product we can sell
and develop the nation. |
