Market Insights

Numbers, tracked over time and dated: rents, salaries, exchange rates, commodity and food prices, and business conditions in both countries.

Why the dates matter more than the numbers

A figure without a date is a liability rather than a service. Costs in both countries move - Nepali prices with inflation, fuel and the season, Korean thresholds with the annual January reset - and a number quoted confidently from two years ago is how people build a budget that does not work.

So everything here carries when it was collected and how, and where a figure is indicative rather than measured it says so.

What is tracked

• Rents, by city and area, which vary enormously within a few streets.
• Salaries by sector, and Korea's annually reset minimum wage.
• Exchange rates between the rupee, the won and the dollar.
• Food and fuel prices, which move visibly in Nepal.
• Business conditions, including anything affecting trade and investment across the corridor.

Using it well

Treat any figure as a starting point to verify locally, not as a quotation. For a rent, ask what the previous tenant paid. For a salary, ask the range rather than the average. For a wage floor, check the current year's published figure.

Living and housing and renting in Korea cover what rent includes in each country, and Nepal-Korea trade and investment cover the commercial picture.

Where the numbers come from

Stated because a number without a provenance is a guess with a decimal point.

Published official figures where they exist: fuel prices, the Korean minimum wage, central bank exchange rates, published fee schedules. These are dated and linked.

Observed ranges for things nobody publishes, such as rents by area or what a trade actually charges. These are presented as ranges with a collection date and a note on how many sources, because that is what they are.

Where we have one data point rather than a range, we say so rather than presenting it as a market rate.