The burden of coping with the fuel hike will largely fall on the middle and lower-middle classes.

When you consider that nearly 25 percent of our GDP is under direct threat from sectoral disruptions, the scale of the crisis becomes clear.

As the fires of conflict in the Middle East continue to rage, the tremors are being felt far beyond the immediate geography of the Levant and the Persian Gulf. For Nepal, a nation inextricably tied to the global energy market and dependent on the labour corridors of the West Asian region, the economic stakes have seldom been higher.