Kathmandu, Nov. 21 -- Double-taxation, profit repatriation and capital gains tax have always been a headache for foreign investors in dealing with rent-seeking that Nepal is infamous for.

When Dolma Impact Fund, the only international venture capital company in the country, applied last year for exemption from capital gains tax citing Nepal's Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with Mauritius, bureaucrats at the Finance Ministry gave it the runaround.

But the interim government's Finance Minister Rameshore Khanal, himself a respected former bureaucrat, is someone who knows that international treaties take precedence over national law.

On 30 October he gave Dolma a strategic capital gains tax break, convinced that Nepal needed ...