Sustainable Growth Through Agricultural Transformation : An Emerging Issue of Policy Reform in Nepal
The extreme income gap that persists between the rich and poor countries led to reconsider the existing growth strategies of poor countries. The poor countries rely heavily on agricultural sector to generate income but it usually remains subsistence and leads to mass poverty and low economic growth, while reverse is true for developed countries. In this context, this paper analyzes the pace of agricultural transformation to explore the future of economic growth. The result indicates that agriculture is not productive enough to accelerate growth and the pace of agricultural transformation is very slow in Nepal. Moreover, the first five years plan to reduce agricultural trade deficit to zero or to maintain food self-reliance condition is falling behind to meet its target. An effort towards diversifying high value crops and developing manufacturing and processing industries is crucial to attain high growth through agricultural transformation