Nepal, Jan. 16 -- Nepal's businesses have long suffered from a shortage of skilled and unskilled human resources amid high unemployment and mass migration for jobs abroad. As a corollary, industrial output has consistently remained below par, and businesses have struggled to meet demand and provide quality services. Perhaps keeping this situation in mind, the government on its part had allocated a huge chunk of the budget for special economic zones in the past five years, but little of it has been spent. In the last fiscal year, only Rs720 million out of the Rs1.38 billion set aside for special economic zones was spent.

Special economic zones (SEZs) are geographically demarcated areas within which the government facilitates industrial ac...