Policy Dialogue: 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐄𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐎𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐋𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐍𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐥

The dialogue featured Hon. Gokarna Bista, Member of Parliament and Former Minister for Labor, Employment and Social Security and Former Minister for Energy as the Policy Guardian. The panel comprising of Mr. Jiblal Bhusal, Joint Secretary of Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies, Mr. Amun Thapa, President of Confederation of Nepalese Industries Young Entrepreneurs Forum & the Founder and CEO of Sasto Deal Pvt. Ltd., Ms. Moushumi Shrestha, Director of Shreenagar Agro Group and Dr. Kalpana Khanal, Senior Research Fellow of Policy Research Institute examined the challenges and innovative ways of mobilization of human resources and made some recommendations to take parliamentary actions to promote employment opportunities to retain the youth labor force in Nepal.

The need to address the gap between planning and implementation of enterprise-based policies, the challenges experienced by the start-up and innovation industry due to lack of proper policies and expertise in government, the urgency to shift Nepal’s remittance-based, trade-based economy to production-based economy, the importance of decreasing the cost of living in Nepal to retain youth labor force, and the gap between the industry needs and the skills equipped by our academic institution were the major issues discussed in the dialogue.

The event brought together 60+ policymakers, CSOs, private companies, journalists and other relevant policy stakeholders. In the Eco Talks Series, the dialogues will continue to feature panels with 3 key policy stakeholders - policy beneficiaries, policy critics and policy implementers and championship of the major takeaways by the young parliamentarian as the policy guardian.

The second policy dialogue of the ECO Talks Series has successfully built a strong base for the policy recommendations to achieve the maximum economic growth potential in this demographic window by finding innovative ways of mobilization of human resources and key lessons to have impactful and incentive contributions of youth employment to accelerate economic growth of Nepal. The dialogue was moderated by television journalist and newscaster Ms. Rupa Khada.

The inaugural dialogue of the Series was held in June which focused on women's economic empowerment. Four more similar dialogues will be held under the ECO Talks Series.

Nepal is bound to witness an unavoidable economic crisis if appropriate actions are not taken on time. To solve the national economic challenges, good public policies along with result-oriented political leadership are required. Daayitwa has introduced the ‘ECO Talks’ with a mission to advocate and promote evidence-led policy decisions for economic growth of the nation. The ECO 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.