Enlarge

Nepal is a country of highly diverse and rich geography, culture, and religions. The mountainous north contains eight of the world's ten highest mountains, including the highest, Mount Everest. The fertile and humid south is heavily urbanized. By some measures, Hinduism is practiced by a greater majority of people in Nepal than in any other nation. A minority faith in the country, Buddhism is linked historically with Nepal as the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama who, as the Buddha Gautama, gave birth to the Buddhist tradition.

Nepal had been a monarchy throughout most of its history. Prithvi Narayan Shah, a Shah dynasty king, unified the many small kingdoms in 1768. Since then, the country had been ruled by a dynasty of kings. However, a decade-long People's Revolution by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) along with several weeks of mass protests by all major political parties of Nepal in 2006, culminated in a peace accord and the ensuing elections for the constituent assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of the abdication of the last Nepali monarch Gyanendra Shah and a federal democratic republic in May 28, 2008 was established. The first President of Nepal, Dr. Ram Baran Yadav was sworn in on 23 July 2008.

According to the CIA, major industries in Nepal include tourism, carpets, textiles, small rice jute, sugar, and oilseed mills; cigarettes, cement and brick factories. Aside from small-scale food processing (rice, wheat and oil mills), light industry, largely concentrated in southeastern Nepal, includes the production of jute goods, refined sugar, cigarettes, matches, spun cotton and synthetic fabrics, wool, footwear, tanned leather, and tea. The carpet, garment and spinning industries are the three largest industrial employers, followed by structural clay products, sugar and jute processing. Sugar production was 49,227 tons in 1995, jute goods, 20,1870 tons; and soap, 23,477 tons. That year, 14.7 million m of synthetic textiles and 5.06 million m of cotton textiles were produced. Industrial production from agricultural inputs included 20,800 tons of vegetable ghee, 16.76 million of beer and liquor, 9 billion cigarettes, and 2,351 tons of tea.

Heavy industry includes a steel-rolling mill, established in 1965, which uses imported materials to produce stainless steel. During the 1980s, the government gave priority to industries such as lumber, plywood, paper, cement, and bricks and tiles, which make use of domestic raw materials and reduce the need for imports. Production by heavy industries in 1995 included 326,839 tons of cement and 95,118 tons of steel rods.