NASC, Lalitpur: Seminar on “Sustainable Road Transport: An Economic Perspective” was conducted on Chaitra 2, 2080 in the premises of NASC building in Annapurna Hall. The seminar was a part of Module IV: Know Your Economy that came under the schedule of Advance Course on Management and Development (ACMD) -4 training. The seminar started at 11:00 am and ended at 4:00 pm. ACMD-4 has jointly conducted the program with good team spirit and motivation. The chief guest of the seminar was Dr. Rajan Khanal, Executive Director of NASC, and the chair of the first session was Mr. Lekhnath Gautam, and second session was chaired by Mr. Ram Prasad Awasthi. Along with that, presentation was done by Mr. Badri Prasad Sharma, and Mr. Indra Prasad Mainali in the first session, while Mr. Janak Puri, and Mr. Niroj Bhujel were the presenters in the second session. NILAAB group has conducted the first session about the “Road Safety and its economic perspective”. The main theme of the first session was cost of lost life of loved ones as immeasurable, and the road traffic deaths and major injuries are increasing human capital loss which has high impact in national economy. So, the collective effort of the Government, Private and Public Sector should intervene to reduce the road traffic deaths.

Likewise, the second session was about the “Impact of EVs on national economy”. The main theme outlined that the trend of import of electric vehicles was increasing exponentially in last three fiscal years. In addition, EVs impact on trade deficit recovery by 0.314 %, and is incremental in rate. The custom duty and excise duty on EVs are lower than those on fossil-fuel vehicles. The plying of EVs on roads of Kathmandu valley has been causing zero tail-pipe emissions. Hence, the import of electric vehicles has positive impact on the national economy, and it helps to reduce the air pollution which is the direct benefit to the environments. Overall, the seminar was managed by Event Managers Mr. Arun Lal Karn, and Manoj Kumar Pokhrel, moderated by Mr. Niraj Paudel and Ms. Laxmi Pant, and the role of rapporteurs were performed by Ms. Asha Sharma and Mr. Suman Kumar Jha. After the presentation, rigorous discussions, queries, and feedbacks were raised in the open discussion. Comments were addressed by the speakers and feedback.

The Chief Guest congratulated every groups for their fruitful work within short time span to relate the topics in the Know your economy module. He advised to focus on the positive economic impact rather only digging on the negative sides of the topics. He suggested to improve the paper including the comments for submission to the concerned authority. Both sessions were concluded by the closing remarks of the chair.