World Bank Country Director David Sislen has warned at the Kantipur Economic Summit that job creation in Nepal is challenging and that the entire population of Kathmandu could emigrate.
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The World Bank's Country Director for Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka, David Sislen, has said that the biggest challenge for Nepal's economic development and future is job creation.
In the opening session of the Kantipur Economic Summit 2026, he mentioned that 1.2 million Nepalis have left the country in the past 21 months alone, and expressed concern that if this rate continues, a number of people equal to the entire population of Kathmandu will leave in the next four years.
He drew attention to the situation of foreign employment at a time when jobs are being lost due to AI in the global market. According to Sislen, the World Bank has made the issue of employment a top priority on its agenda for Nepal.
To achieve this goal, Sislen pointed out the need for reforms in three main areas: infrastructure, policy and finance. He said that Nepal was able to spend only 59 percent of its capital budget in the infrastructure sector last year. He described the uncertainty in Nepal's tax system as a problem.
‘Although Nepal’s banking sector accounts for 12 percent of the GDP, there is a problem in capital mobilization,’ he said, ‘because Nepali banks mainly focus on collateral-based lending and seed capital investments such as venture capital or ‘angel money’ have not been distributed in the market.’ He believes that concrete reforms are needed in all three areas for the development of the private sector and job creation.
