In those days of uncertainties, everybody including those in the business, can be found asking the question "what next?" and "what to do?" in the typical Nepali fashion. The questions have nothing bad in themselves, but what is bad is that they are accompanied by inactivity. What is harming the economy more is this inactivity than the sense of the uncertainty.

Still one can find that there are some who, undeterred by the present confusions, are trying to chart newer course in anticipation of the good times that will hopefully come within a year or half if not within months. No country can remain captive for long to anybody, whether they are a bunch of plunderers outside the government or incompetent puppets of forces unknown that are squatting on the government.

For those who ask the same question again "what to do?" we advise to go back to our January 2002 issue with cover story "avoiding the slump" and also to the November 2001 issue with cover story "tackling corporate security".

Though the issue of corporate security is likely to remain as a serious concern forever now onwards in Nepal, it cannot be regarded as something devastating as many countries in the world can be found surviving with perpetual security problems. We would say that avoiding the slump too is not a much serious problem for the businesses that have already managed to survive this long of the slump.

Since the indications show that Nepal has already reached the bottom of the slump, the next phase will only be that of upward journey. Those businesses that are still waiting for the signals to become 'still more clearer' and postponing investments will certainly be losers in the next phase of revival.

Whether the so-called democracy survives the on-going trial which is to culminate on the elections day of November 13, is immaterial because it is not going to change the fact that the modern days are the days for trade and technology and whoever may rule the country after November 13 will not be able to turn the clock-hands back. 

This is truer in a small country like Nepal. For such countries the philosophy of self-sufficiency is going to be suicidal, and only a free trade will be beneficial. The policy implication of this argument is that the more one spends judiciously today for the enhancement of the technological level of one's business and for the expansion and specialization of the activity, the better. The technological upgradations of Standard Chartered Bank Nepal Ltd. and the expansion into garments by Surya Tobacco (P) Ltd. (now Surya Nepal Pvt. Ltd.) give exactly the same message, for example.