Views of a Nepali Economist

. Nicholas Kristof has a piece in New York Times about the need to send girls to school.

The head of the impoverished household during the week is a malnourished 14-year-old girl, Dao Ngoc Phung. She’s tiny, standing just 4 feet 11 inches and weighing 97 pounds...Yet if Phung is achingly fragile, she’s also breathtakingly strong. You appreciate the challenges that America faces in global competitiveness when you learn that Phung is so obsessed with schoolwork that she sets her alarm for 3 a.m. each day.

Phung wakes her brother and sister, and then after breakfast they all trundle off to school. For Phung, that means a 90-minute bicycle ride each way. She arrives at school 20 minutes early to be sure she’s not late.

Kristof compares the Asian culture with American, and writes about the emphasis that the Asian cultures put on education and meritocracy.

Phung yearns to attend university and become an accountant. It’s an almost impossible dream for a village girl, but across East Asia the poor often compensate for lack of money with a dazzling work ethic and gritty faith that education can change destinies. The obsession with schooling is a legacy of Confucianism — a 2,500-year-old tradition of respect for teachers, scholarship and meritocratic exams. That’s one reason Confucian countries like China, South Korea and Vietnam are among the world’s star performers in the war on poverty.

Granted, Asian schools don’t nurture creativity, and Vietnamese girls are sometimes treated as second-class citizens who must drop out of school to help at home. But education is generally a top priority in East Asia, for everyone from presidents to peasants.

Labels: education, gender inequality, new york times, usa, vietnam

.
Union leads to closure of Fire and Ice restaurant

Asian Development Bank projects four per cent growth in 2012 for Nepal Nepal slips eight positions down in the Economic Freedom rankings

Nepal has slipped eight position down to be ranked at 129th among the 141 economies with a score of 5.50 in this year’s Economic Freedom of the World report released here today. Last year, Nepal was at 121st rank with a score of 5.54.

World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development shows that closing gender gap boosts growth

“Countries that create better opportunities and conditions for women and girls can raise productivity, improve outcomes for children, make institutions more representative, and advance development prospects for all,” it said, adding that in Nepal as many as 14 per cent married women are largely silent on how their earned money is spent. “But they are more actively involved in the decision making recently,” according the World Bank that revealed that women’s greater public voice not only benefits women and children but also men. “Giving women bigger say in managing forests in Nepal has significantly improved conservation outcomes too,” it added. “The disparities between boys and girls in primary education have almost closed over the past 25 years, and at the secondary level, the gaps are shrinking rapidly,” it said, lauding Nepal’s efforts in closing the gender gap.

National Information Technology Centre to be established in Hetauda

The Centre’s building will be constricted at the estimated cost of Rs. 300 million with the grant assistance of the Korean government

India set to overtake Japan as world's third largest economy

India is now the fourth-largest economy behind the US, China and Japan. Last year, Japanese economy was worth $4.31 trillion, while India´s was at $4.06 trillion. But after the devastating tsunami and earthquakes in March, Japan´s economy is expected to contract while India´s economy will grow between 7-8 percent this fiscal year.

Earlier, a report by PwC suggested that the Indian economy would surpass the Japanese economy in 2012. The IMF expects the Japanese economy to contract 0.7 percent this year while India is expected to grow 8.2 percent.

BFIs told to insure deposits up to Rs 500,000

Banks and financial institutions (BFIs) that were required to compulsorily insure deposits up to Rs 200,000 will now need to insure all deposits up to half a million rupees.

Labels: banks, central bank of nepal, china, gender inequality, India, IT, Japan, labor unions