We are being bombarded with questions: Is the economy really stagnating? Has consumption gone down? Have people stopped buying goods and services? Is the remittance from Bipalis drying up? Is the World Bank ending aid? Will Nepal ever recover from the current crisis? Whew! Beads of perspiration is coming off the Beed's brow. Yet, it still feels like things aren't really as bad as people think. Economically speaking.

True, businessmen hunted by regulators for default in loan payment of taxes are panicking. Not paying taxes or not paying debts has nothing to do with insurgency or emergency, it is purely about getting booked for their wilful defaulting. It is not an indication of the economy going downhill.

There is also real panic about consumption crashing post-February First. Though the off take by intermediaries have come down, retail consumption has remained the same. All manufacturers as well as intermediaries in the supply chain were working on their inventory to tide over potential blockades and therefore, too much money is now locked in inventory. If you thought that hoarding can bring more money, at times it can really work against you. It's a lesson to be learnt by the trading community.

Similarly, there are intermediaries who do not pay their vendors on the pretext of lower sales. Let us admit that squeezing vendors has been a way of life and unfortunately, trading remains on taking an arbitrage position on vendors or tax payments. Banks, cautious about lending money, have squeezed funds to the traders thereby creating a working capital crunch. Consumers are buying and only major consumers such as the INGOs and the NGOs have reduced their intake. There are fewer workshops, seminars and projects and that would definitely make some impact.

Yes, tourism has been badly hit. But its problem is not so much security or insurgency as it is excess supply chasing little demand. This has been visible since 1996 and is still valid. While we can cater to a million-and-a-half tourists, we get less than fifth that number. Tourism entrepreneurs kept pushing junkets and pressing for waiver of loans rather than working on concrete plans to tackle the supply side. It is not too late to remedy this.

Remittances have not shrunk, as people who save $100 or $150 a month can only remit that money to Nepal. They can't buy apartments or houses in Malaysia or the Middle East with that kind of money. Fact is, there is a real estate boom that indicates remittances are healthy.

The uncertainty of future assistance from bilateral agencies has perhaps made people believe that the economy has changed post-February First. It has also been made to sound like a major crisis as the future of 'hardship allowances' earning people in projects is unknown. But pragmatic Nepali analysis is best in times like these.