CPN (UML) Chair and former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli said production growth, sustainable job creation and improved living standards should form the main basis of national prosperity, speaking at a party policy study programme at the UML central office in Chyasal on Thursday. He said the party’s objective was to raise citizens’ living standards and reduce poverty, and also warned that attempts to topple governments through undemocratic means had increased worldwide.
Production and livelihoods as priorities
Oli presented production, employment and living standards as connected priorities for the country’s prosperity. His remarks placed growth in production alongside the creation of jobs that can be sustained, rather than treating economic progress as a matter of production alone. He said these goals should be made the principal basis for national prosperity, without outlining specific programmes or targets in the remarks reported from the meeting.
The UML chair also identified improving citizens’ living standards and reducing poverty as objectives for his party. These aims were central to his message at the policy study programme, which was held at the party’s central office in Chyasal. His comments set out a broad direction for the party’s approach: prosperity should be assessed in terms of people’s livelihoods as well as economic production.
Oli’s emphasis on sustainable job creation added an employment dimension to that approach. He linked jobs to the wider goal of raising living standards, while calling for production growth to remain a key national priority. The remarks, as reported, did not specify which sectors should expand, how jobs should be created or what measures the party would pursue to reduce poverty.
Warning over undemocratic government changes
Alongside the economic priorities, Oli said the tendency to topple governments through undemocratic means had increased worldwide. He raised the issue at the same policy meeting, placing concerns about political conduct alongside the party’s stated goals for prosperity and poverty reduction.
His observation was framed as a worldwide trend. The available account of the remarks did not identify particular countries, governments or incidents, and did not provide further detail about what Oli included in the term “undemocratic means.” He did not, in the reported comments, connect the statement to a specific domestic episode.
The two themes in Oli’s address were therefore distinct but both featured in his message to the UML programme: the need to make production, sustainable employment and citizens’ living standards central to national prosperity, and concern about governments being toppled through undemocratic methods. The remarks set out priorities and a political warning, rather than a detailed policy plan. No specific implementation timetable, economic targets or proposed measures were included in the reported account.
