The Cabinet on Friday decided to implement “Clean Feed System” on foreign pay TV channels telecast in Nepal. The move is expected to benefit the domestic advertising market, media and related businesses.

“Clean Feed” is a transmission of broadcast content without advertisement. Nepali advertising agencies had long been demanding introduction of such a policy, stating unrestricted transmission of advertisements by foreign TV channels hindered growth of domestic media and advertising industry.

The Ministry of Information and Communication said the policy will be implemented fully within a year. Secretary at the ministry Dinesh Thapaliya said an action plan will be prepared within mid-September by holding talks with all the stakeholders, and three regulations, including the Broadcasting Regulation, will be amended within mid-October to implement the “Clean Feed Policy”.

The foreign channels and domestic cable operators will be given a certain period for removing advertisements from contents to be broadcast in Nepal. “All these tasks will be completed within a year and the policy will come into full implementation from the first day of next fiscal year 2017-18,” said Thapaliya.

The Advertising Association of Nepal (AAN) welcomed the government’s decision. “Implementation of the ‘Clean Feed Policy’ will boost advertisement and other promotional incomes not only for Nepali TV channels, but also for FM radios and newspapers,” said AAN in a statement. “This will also help to create employment and business opportunities for Nepali artists, production houses, and recording, film and shooting studios, among others.”

AAN president Santosh Shrestha said once the “Clean Feed Policy” is implemented, he expects the television advertisement business to double within a year. According to AAN, the domestic television channels currently receive advertisements worth Rs1 billion annually out of total estimated advertisement market of Rs5 billion.

There are, however, doubts over the implementation of the policy given the decision has been taken by the outgoing government. But Shrestha expressed optimism about the execution as “it will benefit the whole nation”.

He said foreign advertisers do not want to invest in Nepal as the message about their products has been reaching Nepali consumers anyway given huge popularity of foreign channels.

“When they cannot reach out to Nepali masses with foreign channels, they will be forced to invest in Nepal. And, they will not only use television channels for advertising, but also other media, helping to boost revenues for all types of Nepali media,” said Shrestha.

AAN has been complaining Nepali advertisements have to be censored before being telecast, but foreign advertisements are run without any censorship, violating Nepal’s law.