Earlier this week, the government of the South Asian country announced it would aim to become a middle-income country within a decade.

Prime minister Sharma Oli said on Thursday that the government was focused on good governance, maintaining stability, controlling corruption and fulfilling the aspiration of development and prosperity.

He said: “Democracy is a system of the people, and the people must be sovereign. All our policies and programmes are for the people and social transformation.”

He added that the government focus was in line with its slogan of ‘Prosperous Nepal Happy Nepalis’, as reflected in a joint election manifesto.

Earlier this week, at a different occasion, Nepali president Vidya Devi Bhandari presented the policies and programmes of the budget for the next fiscal year on Tuesday.

She said the government set a target of doubling the per capital income, which currently stands at $1,012.

The left alliance government, which was sworn in in February, said in its manifesto it would boost the country’s per capita income to $5,000 within a decade and move towards prosperity.

The budget is due to be presented next week.

Bhandari said: “The economy will grow close to double-digit figure in the next fiscal year while economy would see double-digit growth in the next five years.”

The economy is expected to grow by 5.9% this year and the government has identified agriculture, energy, transport, physical infrastructure, information technology, tourism and civil aviation as key drivers of growth.

The country was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2015, which killed over 8,000 people and the cost of the damage was in 2015 estimated to be about $10bn, according to the government.

The country’s gross domestic product at the time was $19.2bn.

In January CIPFA signed a memorandum of understanding with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nepal to help boost public financial management.