Business advisor Sajena Dwa wrote a blog about the situation in Nepal at the moment.
"Today marks the 24th day of nationwide lock down announced by the Nepali government. We see streets with nothing but police patrolling, citizens walking 100s of kilometer back to their native homes in fear of food shortages, factories closed, jobs lost, news channels running “Corona Update” 24*7 and much more.
On our clients' part, the initial announcement of the lock down was a huge blow as none of them had contingency plans for this kind of situation. Dairy factories closed, the first flush tea leaves waiting to be plucked at the garden, paddy collected waiting to be processed at the factory, vegetables at the field waiting to be harvest, lack of inputs for the new crops and many other challenges came across for our clients. Life is harder in places where cases of corona have been confirmed compared to the place where so far no cases have been seen. For example, KDDC, one of our dairy cooperative clients in the eastern region, is operating at least 50% of their normal volume where SDMPCL, another dairy cooperative close to the outbreak region is totally shut down.
Now as we have slowly gotten used to this lock down situation, with support of local government authorities, the cooperatives have obtained a special permit to resume their operation, although not in full phase. As you can see in pictures below, dairy factories have started the collection and processing of milk (50% of the previous collection), cooperatives such as AACL, SMPCL, DSFACL using their vehicles to collect and deliver vegetables and rice to end consumers, the first flush of tea at Tinjure Tea Cooperative is already processed and cooperative outlets are opening up.
In addition, a recent news report states that Nepali citizens have increased the use of internet by 40% and our clients are making use of social media such as Facebook to collect the orders from consumers and deliver it to them directly. Next to that, already established (popular) online delivery services reach out to sell fresh farmers’ products and using online payment to reduce contact between people, which has proven to be very successful. As team Vietnam has already explained about their initiatives toward online marketing campaign, it is definitely something Nepal seeks to learn from and work together with our clients further. In the end, this crisis might also lead to a small digital revolution and lead to new business opportunities for agricultural cooperatives in Nepal, time will tell.
Although we cannot meet in our office in Kathmandu for the time being because we are all working from our homes, we have regular meetings in MS Teams, Zoom or Whats App to discuss how we can help our clients in these challenging times.
One of the things we are now working on, is the setup of a Corona help desk Nepal, hoping that our clients will benefit from online business advice and sharing of experiences. Cooperatives have proven to be more resilient in times of crisis, and we are ready to work with them to overcome this pandemic and its consequences!"
Sajena Dwa, business advisor Nepal