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I advocate for the Nomad Visa Provision in Nepal

Once, I was advised to help two students of Lumbini Buddhist University who were pursuing their Ph.D. regarding data analysis. I helped them to the best of my knowledge. After that, I have not heard from these students. I do not know whether they were successful or not. This is how I got to know about Lumbini Buddhist University. By luck, I got an assignment to prepare a course on tourism economics at Lumbini Buddhist University. During the presentation of the course details, I emphasized to the faculty that they should have knowledge of culture, religion, nature, food, festivals, sports, and most importantly, they should be travel enthusiasts, lovers of travel, and nomads.

On one occasion, a close acquaintance of mine was made tourism minister. I congratulated him and wanted to meet to discuss the nomad visa to obtain tourism benefits. However, I was unable to obtain a meeting. I sent a text message to him; no response was received. There was limited work-from-home options prior to 2020; however, it has increased considerably in the new normal post-COVID-19 outbreak. People want to visit affordable, safe, beautiful, and rich cultural destinations to carry out their remote work. This is a new opportunity for countries such as Nepal to implement a nomad visa.

Nomad visas are special visas that enable remote workers to stay in a foreign country legally. They can stay in a foreign country for 6 to 24 months while working for companies based in other countries. They can visit popular and easily accessible destinations for remote work. To date, Portugal, Spain, Croatia, Estonia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Thailand, and Dubai are popular destinations for nomads and remote work. Recently, a South Asian country named Sri Lanka introduced a special feature in their visa by including the ‘nomad visa’ option, making it the first mover in the South Asian region.

I have always supported and advocated for the nomad visa while dealing with government and political figures because it is expected that Nepal’s remittance dependency will soon face saturation in terms of foreign exchange earnings in the future. The nomad visa provision can be a new strategy to solve foreign exchange reserve problems in Nepal. Despite my efforts to convince the Ministry of Tourism, the Minister, and the Nepal Tourism Board, no attention was given to discuss this further.

With the new political system in place, there are many young and educated minds willing to contribute to the development of Nepal. Whoever you are in the position of tourism minister, your first and foremost task should be to introduce the nomad visa provision.

I look forward to this scenario.

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