s been encouraging trade and foreign investment, e.g., by
eliminating business licenses and registration requirements in order
to simplify domestic and foreign investment. The government also has
been cutting public expenditures by reducing subsidies, privatizing
state industries, and laying off civil servants. Prospects for foreign
trade and investment in the 1990s remain poor, however, because of the
small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its
remoteness, and susceptibility to natural disaster. The international
community provides funding for 70% of Nepal's developmental budget and
for 30% of total budgetary expenditures. The government, realizing
that attempts to reverse three years of liberalization would
jeopardize this vital support, almost certainly will move ahead with
its reform program in 1995-96.

National product: GDP - purchasing power parity - $22.4 billion (1994
est.)

National product real growth rate: 5% (1994 est.)

National product per capita: $1,060 (1994 est.)

Inflation rate (consumer prices): 9.6% (June 1994)

Unemployment rate: NA%; note - there is substantial underemployment
(1994)

Budget:
revenues: $455 million
expenditures: $854 million, including capital expenditures of $427
million (FY93/94 est.)

Exports: $593 million (f.o.b., 1993) but does not include unrecorded
border trade with India
commodities: carpets, clothing, leather goods, jute goods, grain
partners: India, US, Germany, UK

Imports: $899 million (c.i.f., 1993)
commodities: petroleum products 20%, fertilizer 11%, machinery 10%
partners: India, Singapore, Japan, Germany

External debt: $2 billion (1993 est.)

Industrial production: NA

Electricity:
capacity: 280,000 kW
production: 920 million kWh
consumption per capita: 41 kWh (1993)

Industries: small rice, jute, sugar, and oilseed mills; cigarette,
textile, carpet, cement, and brick production; tourism

Agriculture: rice, corn, wheat, sugarcane, root crops, milk, buffalo
meat; not self-sufficient in food, particularly in drought years

Illicit drugs: illicit producer of cannabis for the domestic and
international drug markets; transit point for heroin from Southeast
Asia to the West

Economic aid:
recipient: US commitments, including Ex-Im (FY70-89), $304 million;
Western (non-US) countries, ODA and OOF bilateral commitments
(1980-89), $2.23 billion; OPEC bilateral aid (1979-89), $30 milli