Industrialization, input duties and revenue concerns in Nepal

Paras Kharel

Working Papers from South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics and Environment

Abstract: This paper seeks to contribute to the discourse on industrialization in Nepal. It shows that it would be premature to write off manufacturing-powered industrialization. It emphasizes that the debate over whether protecting domestic industry from import competition as part of an industrialization strategy works or not is far from settled. It discusses Nepal's muddled input-tariff policy for exports, and examines whether there are valid revenue loss concerns behind the anti-export bias of the tariff policy. While existing research on Nepal suggests revenue loss is not significant if tariff elimination is targeted at inputs used by a few key export products, the paper suggests further extensions and lines of inquiry, taking into account alternative scenarios. Finally, it highlights some questions, trade-offs and issues in tariff setting for the Government of Nepal to ponder.

Keywords: Manufacturing; structural transformation; infant industry; liberalization; deindustrialization; industrial policy; trade policy; tariff; revenue loss (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 L52 L60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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https://sawtee.org/publications/WP20_kharel_indust ... oncerns-in-Nepal.pdf First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:saw:wpaper:wp/20/01

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