Policy Dialogue: 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧-𝐋𝐞𝐝 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐬

The dialogue featured Hon. Chanda Chaudhary, Member of Parliament and Former Minister of Women, Children and Senior Citizens as the Policy Champion. The panel comprising of Dr. Gunakar Bhatta, Executive Director, Nepal Rastra Bank, Ms. Monisha Shrestha, Value Chain and Access to Finance Expert, Ms. Shova Gyawali, First Vice President, FWEAN and Director, Nepal Republic Media Pvt. Ltd., and Mr. Suman Joshi, Executive Director, One to Watch examined the gender-responsive economic policies that incorporate women-led enterprises and entrepreneurs (urban and rural) to promote the enterprising economic growth of Nepal while boosting their access to financial investment. The panel recommended innovative alternatives like psychometric scoring, digital footprint of loan applicants to establish credit guarantee schemes to improve women’s access to finance.

The challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Nepal, lack of rural MSMEs focused policies and programs, unnecessary rules and regulations based on societal gender stereotypes discouraging women entrepreneurs, complicated documentation processes in banking and financial institutions (BFIs), lack of coordination between government agencies and BFIs, ineffective communication on existing loan and investment schemes, and language barriers to reach rural women entrepreneurs, alternative credit guarantee schemes, etc. were the major issues discussed in the dialogue.

The discussion was based on the policy brief aiming to support the policymakers and policy implementers to come up with pragmatic and effective models and schemes with a rich and diverse set of knowledge from the panelists. The event brought together 50+ policymakers, CSOs, private companies, journalists and other relevant policy stakeholders. In the ECON Talks Series, the dialogues will continue to feature panels with key policy stakeholders - policy beneficiaries, policy critics, policy implementers and championship of the major takeaways by the young parliamentarian as the policy champion.

The fourth policy dialogue of the ECON Talks Series was moderated by the former Miss Nepal, Ms. Sugarika KC. The past three dialogues of the Series focused on women's economic empowerment, youth employment and leveraging diaspora investment for economic development of the nation respectively. Two more similar dialogues will be organized under the ECON Talks Series.

Daayitwa has introduced the ‘ECON Talks’ with a mission to advocate and promote evidence-led policy decisions for economic growth of the nation. The ECON Talks Policy Dialogue Series is a collaborative effort of Daayitwa and National Democratic Institute (NDI) that aims to support the Members of Parliament to engage with stakeholders on key economic policy issues regarding Nepal’s economic development.