Nepal’s diverse culture has led to development of a vast variety of musical instruments that produce unique tunes. Most of the instruments were developed by people coming from certain caste groups known for their special traditional skills. The people belonging to the same caste are still producing and supplying the instruments in the market. However, this tradition of producing musical instrument is vanishing.

Don’t blame it only on the wave of modernisation, globalisation and open market economy that made it easier for the foreign musical instruments to take over Nepal’s musical instrument market. Blame it also on the lack of modernisation, commercialisation and institutionalisation of such traditional skills. As a result, Nepal's dependency on imports for musical instruments has increased over the past 12 years. Though Nepal's export too of musical instruments has increased over the past few years, such export is mostly of musical bowls.  

Keeping in view such trend, Nepal should adopt a policy of becoming self-reliant on production of musical instruments and increasing export of traditional Nepali musical instruments. The demand for traditional musical instruments is high among the Nepali Diaspora. Youths of certain castes who inherit such skills should be given special facility and support to modernise and commercialise Nepali musical instrument industry.

Likewise, Nepal should also give due priority to diversify this industry by focusing on producing within Nepal such musical instruments as guitar, harmonium, drum sets etc, that are among the major imports. Global import of musical instruments is huge with a market size of USD 7.5 billion. This indicates a good export potential for Nepali musical instruments industry.