Our Team

Hon'ble Koirala is a renowned Nepalese development economist. He is a former Minister for Finance in the federal government of Nepal. As a person with deep insights into Nepal's economy as a whole, he has strong aptitude and very substantial experience in the tourism sector in particular. During his career with the public service system of Nepal, he served at the Ministry of Tourism for almost a decade in various senior positions with responsibilities in policy formulation and implementation. He contributed significantly to the success of the Visit Nepal Year 1998.

Hon'ble Koirala also held ministerial portfolios in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies in the federal government of Nepal.

Mr Sushil Ghimire is a former Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation of the government of Nepal. With substantial experience in overall planning and management of Nepal's entire tourism sector, he has served as the Chairman of the Boards of Directors of Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC), Nepal Academy of Tourism and Hotel Management (NATHM), Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), and the Hanumandhoka Palace Museum Board.

Mr Ghimire led the Nepalese delegations to several high- level international meetings, conferences and seminars on tourism and travel trade. Some of them include the ITB Travel Mart in Berlin, Germany; World Travel Mart (WTM) in London, UK; Travel sales missions in Copenhagen, Denmark and Oslo, Norway; and International Travel Mart in Melbourne, Australia. He also led the national delegation to the World Heritage Conference of UNESCO in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and to the celebration of the Mt. Everest Diamond Jubilee Program in Paris, France. Similarly, he led a high-level delegation to Russia at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture to start a cultural exchange program between Nepal and Russia.

During his long career in the public service system of Nepal, Mr Ghimire had also served as the Secretary in several other ministries of the federal government of Nepal. They are the Ministry of Information and Communication, the Ministry of Land Reform and Management, the Ministry of Youth and Sports, and the Ministry of Local Development.

He was with the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) as a Civil Affairs Officer (P4 level) during 2000-01..

Mr Nagendra Prasad Ghimire is a former Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation of the government of Nepal. It was during his tenure as the Secretary that Nepal Tourism Year 2011 was launched as a national campaign. Other important achievements during his service in the government include conducting a detailed feasibility study of the Second International Airport at Nijgad. He contributed greatly to organizing the first-ever cabinet meeting of the government of Nepal at Kalapatthar, near the Mt. Everest Base Camp on December 4, 2009. This event attracted big global attention and was much appreciated by the international community and friends of Nepal. He had a vital role in organizing the Summiteers Summit to Save the Himalayas Campaign in Copenhagen to draw the attention of the global community to the perils of climate change.

Mr Ghimire is one of the very few professionals with a thorough knowledge of the functioning of the entire civil aviation system in Nepal. As the first Director General of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, he contributed substantially to its development and promotion. He was instrumental in successfully conducting the landmark 34th Conference of the Director Generals of Civil Aviation of Asia & Pacific Regions in Kathmandu, Nepal in 1998. It was during his tenure as the Director General that the Indian Airlines flights to and from Kathmandu were resumed. Those flights were suspended by India after the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu.

Dr Pant has a very rich career and professional history, particularly at the international level, in areas such as Statistics, National Accounts, Quantitative Economics, Economic Policy and Agriculture Policy. With a PhD in Applied Statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, he was a senior staff member of the Asian Development Bank at its headquarters in Manila from 1996 to 2008. During this period he held several key positions such as the Director of the Development Indicators and Policy Research Division; ICP Regional Coordinator for Asia and the Pacific at the Economics and Research Department; Principal Statistician at the Economics and Research Department; Senior Statistician at the Statistics and Data Systems Division, and Principal Regional Cooperation Specialist at the Bank's Country Office in Nepal. Prior to joining ADB, he had served the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) in Bangkok from 1986 to 1995 in the capacity of the Chief of the Statistical Information

Mr Chandra Prasad Bhattarai is a development economist with almost four decades of national and international work experience in the relevant field. With very extensive field research experience in Nepal in projects commissioned by key international development partners including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNDP, USAID, GTZ, JICA, ActionAid International, International Red Cross, World Education, Plan International, etc. in almost all major economic and social development sectors, he is well versed with the ground realities of Nepal's overall economic and social development issues. His specific interest in the tourism sector dates back to the period 1985-1997 when he was the desk officer responsible for the planning and programming of Nepal's tourism sector at the National Planning Commission, the country's apex planning body to oversee the annual programming of all the development sectors. It provided him with a unique opportunity to observe from a very close range how Nepal's tourism sector functions, and enriched him in both the policy issues ranging from the grass root to higher levels of private and public sector engagements and international development partners' perspectives and priorities for Nepal's tourism sector development.

Mr Bhattarai holds Master's degree in Economics from Tribhuvan University (Nepal). He holds another Master's degree in Development Planning from the University of Bradford (UK). Later, he completed a non-degree course in Public Sector Financial Management at Harvard University (USA). While the UK government had provided him with a fellowship for study in the UK, the US government had offered him the same for study in the USA.

He was associated with a UNDP/ADB/AusAID-supported project with the government of Papua New Guinea as a long- term international expert during 2001-2006.

For some time during 2019-20, he was the independent columnist on tourism issues for The Kathmandu Post, Nepal's largest-selling English daily.  Click here for some of Mr Bhattarai's published articles on Nepal's tourism.

Mr Mohan Chapagain is a retired Joint Secretary to the federal government of Nepal with over 30 years of cumulative experience in the public service system. During this period he served in the Ministry of General Administration, the Ministry of Agricultural Development and the Ministry of Home Affairs. He has gained rich experience working in different districts across the mountains, hills and plains of Nepal.

The areas of his involvement include governance, local development, national security, conflict management, public policy formulation, project implementation, programme evaluation, and coordination and collaboration with a wide range of government and non-governmental organizations. He has a proven track record of promoting social inclusion and capacity building of the indigenous, marginalized and oppressed communities at the local level in Nepal. He has also contributed to the local poverty alleviation efforts through the mobilization of local means and resources, and the optimal utilization of the skills and technologies available.

Mr Chapagain holds a Master's degree in Public Administration from Tribhuvan University, Nepal.