Nepal Business Forum – the first national platform for public-private dialogue – received a global award for outstanding achievement at the seventh International Symposium on Public-Private Dialogue held on March 3-6 in Frankfurt, Germany.
At the symposium, NBF was awarded the global Howard Award for Outstanding Achievement in Public Private Dialogue (PPD). The selection was made between 145 participants representing 33 public-private dialogue forums across the world. Morocco and Kenya won special category awards.
The inaugural Howard Award was presented to the Nepal delegation by director of Economic Development and Employment Division Marita Brommelmeier, GIZ on behalf of the Global Community of Practice for PPD. The delegation, led by Industry Finance Krishna Gyawali of Industry, consisted of five public and private sector representatives including those from the Industry Ministry, CNI and Eastern Regional Business Forum.
At the Symposium – sponsored by GIZ and the World Bank Group – the delegation heard about the powerful role that Public-Private Dialogue is playing in the development of countries as diverse as Rwanda, Bangladesh, Egypt, Tajikistan, Kenya, and Cambodia, and discussed discussed how capacity could be developed to effectively manage and monitor the PPD process and also explored new tools for ensuring SME’s and micro entrepreneurs that were also captured within the forum.
The secretary presented the Nepal experience, and also spoke as a panelist in a plenary session on sustainability of the PPD process in a country like Nepal, and highlighted the need for engaging country partners including the government, private sector, civil society and external development partners including experts and facilitators in cultivating, continuously nurturing and institutionalizing the PPD process on a sustainable basis to produce visible and measurable results for the economic development of the country.
During his speech, he discussed how Nepal is already taking steps to strengthen local ownership of the forum through providing offices and staff to Nepal Business Forum. He shared the achievements of the forum, and also discussed how Nepal is working to improve the capacity of the participants, highlighting the need for training and this type of peer to peer learning. He talked about the need for technical inputs into the PPD process and how Nepal is working to improve this process and also the important work of the NBF in bringing different private sector and public sector groups together.