The government of Japan is likely to accept Nepal's proposal for promoting more than 22 exportable items to the Japanese market under the Aid for Trade (AfT) scheme, The Himalayan Times reported on Wednesday.

The proposal prepared by the ministry of industry, commerce and supplies (MoICS) has recently been submitted to the ministry of finance, identifying the list of exportable products.

In recent days, the World Trade Organization (WTO) started discussing ways to expedite implementation of AfT among all 32 WTO member least developed countries (LDCs) as per the decision of the sixth WTO ministerial meeting held in Hong Kong in December 2005.

The WTO meeting has decided to give aid to LDCs worth 10 billion U.S. dollars to boost their weak economies under AfT.

The proposal is being sent to the embassy of Japan here in Nepal for final approval soon, a source at the MoICS said on condition of anonymity.

However, Japan has only allocated 2 billion dollars to be given to 32 LDCs in a bid to boost their economies.

Some of the products that Nepal has put forth are honey, sweet orange, coffee, jute products, essential oil, medicinal herbs, rainbow trout and ginger to boost rural economy.

However, Japan is interested to help in more than 22 exportable products under the one-village-one-product concept.

Japan initially started one-village-one-product concept in 1979, which is now becoming more popular in other countries.

Not only that, Nepal government has also picked up the idea of developing one-village-one-product concept in the fiscal year 2006- 07 budget starting on July 16 to boost exportable products such as lapsi, junar, rainbow trout and bell.

Current exportable Nepali products for Japanese consumers are handicrafts and agricultural products.

The Japanese aid is being used for people who are involved in export sector such as skill training, processing, product development, packing and standardization of product.

Source: Xinhua