Foreign study costs outpace growth in Nepal’s service exports

Education spending abroad has become the biggest drain on Nepal’s service trade balance, outweighing gains from tourism and other exports.

Every year, thousands of Nepali students leave the country for higher education, taking billions of rupees in foreign exchange out of Nepal. Their educational expenses have become the single largest driver of Nepal’s widening service trade deficit, overshadowing gains from tourism and the country’s fast-growing information technology (IT) exports, according to the government’s latest trade report .