Domestic Brief Just do IT
FROM
ISSUE #21 (15 DEC 2000 - 21 DEC 2000)
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Nepal finally has an Information Technology (IT) strategy. "We've missed the industrial revolution and the green revolution, but we don't want to miss this one," said Surendra Chaudhary, our S&T minister who is a self-confessed fan of India's cybercrat, Chandrababu Naidu. Chaudhary reckons Nepal can earn Rs10 billion from exporting IT products in five years. Nepal wants to model itself after Naidu's Andhra Pradesh, but the private sector says the government has got one thing wrong: Indian industry gets duty-free hardware and software imports. In Nepal, we still tax the knowledge economy. Equipment coming into the proposed IT Park in Banepa will have a one-percent duty for five years. There have been no major investors in Nepal since 1997, and from the look of it, the new policy is not going to change that. Here's a tip for an amendment: allow duty-free hardware and software imports and provide incentives to this dollar-earning industry.
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