Products that Nepal categorized as ones having the highest export potential, suffered continued decline in their exports over the last two years consecutively.

Nepal listed 12 products including cardamom, lentil, tea, medicinal herbs and essential oil, ginger, noodle, natural honey, iron and steel products, woolen and pashmina shawl, Nepalese handmade paper, woolen products and article of silver jewelry in 2010 as ones with the highest export potential.

Likewise, seven services including tourism, labor, information technology, health, education, engineering and hydropower have also been included in the list under the Nepal Trade Integration Strategy (NTIS) 2010.

The export of the products under the NTIS declined for the last two years, according to the data by Trade and Export Promotion Centre (TEPC), a government body engaged in export promotion under the Ministry of Commerce.

In the last fiscal year 2015-16 that concluded in mid-July, the combined exports of these products declined by 18 percent to 188 million U.S. dollars. The export of these products was worth 230 million U.S. dollars in fiscal year 2014-15 and 257 million U.S. dollars in fiscal year 2013-14.

Rabi Shankar Sainju, joint secretary at the Commerce Ministry told Xinhua that the decline was the reflection of overall poor records in exports in the recent years.

Nepal's overall export has been in decline in the past two years as export decreased by 18 percent in the last fiscal year and it saw a decline of 5.2 percent in the previous fiscal year, according to TEPC. The NTIS products covered 28 percent of Nepal's total exports in the last fiscal year.

Sainju said that most of the products listed under NTIS are agriculture products and they have been facing quarantine related problems for exports frequently due to the lack of sufficient quarantine infrastructure in the country.

Nepal exports most of the NTIS products to India, while China and other countries are also destinations for some of the products such as handicrafts.

"Because of the lack of mutual recognition agreement to the quality test conducted at the laboratories of either countries between Nepal and India, Nepal's agriculture products have been facing barriers from the southern neighbor on quality related issues," said Posh Raj Pandey, a trade expert.

Meanwhile, considering the poor performance of products under NTIS, the Nepalese government has decided to revise the list, by removing some poorly performing products from the list and adding a few new ones.

In the revised list, lentils, honey, noodles, handmade paper, silver jewellery and iron and steel products are out. Meanwhile, fabrics, textile and yarn, leather and footwear have been added to the list. Endit

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