Recently government of Nepal made public a study report titled Nepal Trade Integration Strategy 2010 which identifies 19 products as having export potetiall (EP). The export of different products has identified 12 commodities and 7 services namely tourism, labor services, hydro-electricity, education, health, engineering and IT/BOP as having EP of the 12 commodities 7 are agro-food products.
It is true that agricultural products identified in the report like big cardamom, ginger,honey,lentils,tea,dairy product,sugar and medicinal berbs have EP. Nonetheless, farm supplies are mostly too little in quantity to lure or capture reliable export markets besides being too law in value-added. As such, the whole agriculture sector needs to be restructured and its capacity enhanced with an integrated approach on raising production and productivity,promoting value addition and balancing domestic demands and exports.
'Iron and steel' has been identified on the basis of recent export surge of iron rods. But first, we cannot rely on single market as it may collapse anytime depending on the destination country's tarrif and more importantly, a commodity whose every raw material is imported and whose power requirement is very high cannot be defined as having CA, especially in a power- deficit power high cost country; and EPs without CAs do not make sense.