Date and Time: 10 Magh, 2078, 1:00PM to 4:00PM
Place: Alfa House and Zoom
On 24 the Jan, both physical and virtual (hybrid) program was done in the presence of the communities entrepreneurs, stakeholders from civil societies, researcher and GFN family.6 groups of entrepreneurs were presented in the meeting, to share virtually about their enterprise and story of their experience till date. The groups presented on Bamboo enterprise, Dhakiya production, Handicraft, Vedh bans, Bel juice, and Turmeric farming.
The program was facilitated by Chairperson of GFN Mr. Ghan Shyam Pandey. He highlighted the about the objective of the program and factors hindering in the development and promotion of the enterprise of Nepal especially small enterprise managed by communities.
The common constrains found after listening to the views from the CF entrepreneurs were lack of adequate capital to run without external support, land use conflict in the CF area, lack of raw materials and marketing capabilities within communities.
Community based forest management have relatively higher effectiveness in sustainable forest management and enhancing livelihoods. But still, due to fluctuating rules of government, people’s lives have not been uplifted as expected because of not being able to utilize the maximum available resources from the CF.According to the groups, illogical royalty rates and multiple taxations, registration of CBF enterprises complex and confusing pattern, marketing of the forest products in an international market being difficult for microenterprises, absence of community friendly rules have created more challenges for communities to establish enterprise locally.
Stakeholders advised that the product created by communities should first be supported by governmental and local organizations in order to increase communities’ self-strength. The government should identify locally created products and encourage other communities to do so. Similarly, final processing is not done in Nepal due to a shortage of machines, and the same product exported should be imported as a usable product by Nepal after final processing. This is a highly sensitive problem that should be resolved as soon as possible through collaboration between the government, the corporate sector, and other funding agencies.
It was learnt that community forest based productions and promotions can make very successful enterprise generating both social and economic capitals at local level. Certain forest policies have favored revenue production through micro-enterprise development, government measures have primarily focused on encouraging community-based conservation and meeting subsistence needs. In the same way Small-scale businesses are hampered by a controlled policy environment in which they are required to follow legal procedures that were created for the benefit of larger production enterprises and high-investment projects. Thus, in the context of Nepal, the policy climate for community-based forest enterprises is control-oriented rather than facilitative for market access and development.
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