The Nepal Handicraft Federation has announced a three-day handicraft expo at Amrapali Event in Kathmandu from May 22 to 24, bringing together artisans, producers, and buyers at a moment when the sector is looking for any momentum it can find.
The expo will feature around 70 stalls displaying and selling handicrafts alongside cultural performances and live skill demonstrations. Federation vice-president Malika Shrestha, speaking at a press conference on Monday, said the event was built around the “Make in Nepal, Made in Nepal” concept and would also include other Nepali goods with export potential. She said the expo aimed to build direct links between producers and consumers, and to support the preservation of traditional art forms that struggle to survive without sustained market demand.
Nepal’s handicraft industry has historically been one of the country’s more visible export earners, woven into the tourism economy and long marketed abroad through the image of Nepali craft traditions: thangka (Buddhist scroll paintings), pashmina (fine cashmere wool textile), wood carvings, metalwork, sukundo (traditional pottery) from Bhaktapur, and lokta (handmade paper made from the Himalayan lokta shrub) among them. At its peak in the early 2000s, handicraft exports were a significant contributor to foreign exchange. But the sector has been battered repeatedly since: first by the political instability of the conflict years, then by the 2015 earthquakes, which devastated artisan communities in the Kathmandu Valley, and more recently by the economic disruptions of the pandemic and a sustained slump in tourist arrivals.
The recovery has been uneven. While higher-end craft products have found some traction through online export channels and diaspora buyers, smaller artisans producing traditional goods have faced a difficult combination of rising input costs, shrinking local demand, and competition from cheaper machine-made imitations, many of them imported and passed off as authentic Nepali handicraft in tourist markets. The federation has repeatedly flagged the absence of a reliable certification and quality assurance system as one of the sector’s structural weaknesses.
Expos of this kind are seen by the federation as one of the few dependable mechanisms for reconnecting artisans with buyers willing to pay fair value, and for giving smaller producers visibility they cannot generate on their own.
The government’s 2026/27 policy programme, presented to Parliament earlier this week, made passing reference to cottage and small industries but stopped short of any specific commitment to the handicraft sector, something industry representatives say reflects a broader pattern of rhetorical support without follow-through.
