What gave the best return in Nepal over the last 10 years: land, shares, gold, or FD?

Gold was the standout. A roughly 5x gain over the decade, around 16 to 18% a year, driven by the 2024 to 2026 global surge and the rupee weakening against the dollar. Well-located Kathmandu Valley land probably came second, but the data is weak and prices corrected sharply from their 2023 peak. NEPSE was third on price alone and only competitive once dividends and bonus shares are added. A fixed deposit came last, barely beating inflation after the 6% interest tax.

How much would Rs 5 lakh be today if invested in gold 10 years ago?

Roughly Rs 25 lakh. Gold went from around Rs 55,000 per tola in 2016 to about Rs 2.9 lakh per tola in mid-2026, after touching record highs above Rs 3 lakh. That is close to a 5x gain, a compound rate in the high teens. The figure is before making charges on jewellery and before the 2026 budget doubled gold customs duty from 10% to 20%, both of which eat into what you actually pocket.

Did NEPSE beat fixed deposits over 10 years?

On price alone, barely, and timing decided it. A 2016 entry was near a market peak, so the price index only rose modestly to 2026. Add the 3 to 5% a year that Nepali companies pay in cash dividends and bonus shares, and equity pulls clearly ahead of an FD's roughly 7%. But anyone who bought near the August 2021 peak of 3,227 spent years underwater, so the average return hides a brutal path.

Is land still the best investment in Nepal?

Kathmandu Valley land multiplied over the decade, with NRB at one point pegging Valley price growth near 27.7% a year, but it corrected roughly 20% from its 2023 peak by 2026. It is illiquid (months to sell), lumpy (you cannot buy a corner of a plot), and a sale carries 5 to 7.5% capital gains tax. The headline gain is real; the frictions are larger than for any other asset here.

Did fixed deposits beat inflation in Nepal?

Only just. A deposit rolled at the decade-average rate of about 7.5% nets roughly 7% after the 6% interest TDS, against average inflation of about 5 to 5.5%. That is a thin positive real return across the full decade, and it turned negative in the high-inflation years like 2016, 2022, and 2023 when rates lagged prices. An FD preserves capital; it does not build wealth.

What is the catch with these 10-year numbers?

Every figure assumes a single lump sum invested in 2016 and left untouched until 2026, and ignores when you actually needed the money. Real life involves entry timing, partial withdrawals, and goals with deadlines. The land number especially is an estimate, because Nepal has no clean per-aana price index with two dated endpoints. Treat the comparison as an illustration of how the asset classes behaved, not a forecast.

Land vs NEPSE vs Gold vs FD: Nepal 10-Year Returns

Two relatives, one decision, ten years ago. One put Rs 5 lakh from a land sale straight back into another plot on the Valley fringe. The other, more cautious, locked the same Rs 5 lakh into a fixed deposit and rolled it over every year. At a recent family gathering the difference between their two outcomes was the unspoken subtext of the whole conversation, and nobody had actually done the math.

So here is the math, across the four boxes most Nepali money goes into: land, NEPSE, gold, and a fixed deposit. The honest version, with the catches the headline multiples leave out, and one asset where the data is genuinely shaky.

The setup: Rs 5 lakh, 2016, four boxes

The window is roughly 2016 to mid-2026, about ten years. The starting sum is Rs 5 lakh, invested once and left alone. The endpoints for gold and NEPSE come from dated price records; the FD figure is a compounding calculation at the decade-average rate; the land figure is the weakest, and I will say so clearly when we get there. None of this is advice on what to buy now. It is a look back at how the four behaved.

The headline table

Asset	Rough multiple	Rough CAGR	Rs 5 lakh becomes	How solid is the number
Gold	~5x	16 to 18%	~Rs 25 lakh	Dated price records
Land (Valley, well-located)	~4x	12 to 17%	~Rs 20 lakh	Estimate, weak data
NEPSE (price only)	~1.8x	~7%	~Rs 9 lakh	+ dividends on top
Fixed deposit (rolled)	~2x	~7%	~Rs 9.75 lakh	Calculation
Inflation hurdle	~1.7x	5 to 5.5%	~Rs 8.5 lakh	To merely stand still

Read the last row first. Anything below Rs 8.5 lakh lost purchasing power. That reframes the FD: a "safe" deposit that grew to Rs 9.75 lakh beat inflation by a whisker, not by much.

Gold: the decade's winner

Gold went from around Rs 55,000 per tola in 2016 to about Rs 2.9 lakh per tola in mid-2026, after touching record highs above Rs 3 lakh during the year. That is close to a 5x gain, a compound rate in the high teens, and it lines up with the roughly 16% ten-year figure in the gold-as-investment post.

Three forces drove it: a global gold surge through 2024 to 2026, the Nepali rupee weakening against the dollar (gold is priced in dollars, so a weaker rupee lifts the local price), and Nepal's own 2026 budget doubling gold customs duty from 10% to 20%, which pushed quoted prices up further. The catch is what you keep. Jewellery carries a 15 to 20% making-charge spread, so the buy-back value of a necklace is well below the quoted rate, a point the record-high gold post makes in detail. Bullion and coins keep more of the gain. The 5x is a bullion number, not a bangle number.

Land: probably second, but the data is thin

This is the asset everyone is sure about and nobody can cite cleanly. Nepal has no published per-aana price index with two dated endpoints, so any land multiple is an estimate built from fragments.

What the fragments say: NRB at one point pegged Kathmandu Valley property prices rising about 27.7% a year, doubling roughly every three and a half years. News records of specific plots back the boom, a Tinkune property that went from Rs 2 crore to Rs 8 crore in about six years, a Ring Road plot from Rs 1 crore to Rs 5 crore in five. If the boom rates had simply held, Rs 5 lakh would be worth far more than Rs 20 lakh.

But they did not hold. The Valley median price per aana corrected roughly 20% from its 2023 peak by 2026, so a clean 2016-to-2026 multiple is messier than the boom headlines suggest. My best estimate for well-located Valley land is around 4x, landing near Rs 20 lakh, and I would put a wide band around it. The honest summary: land likely beat NEPSE and FD this decade, but the number is soft, and land's frictions (covered next) are the heaviest of the four.

NEPSE: timing punished you, dividends rescued you

NEPSE is the most timing-sensitive box on the table. A 2016 entry was unlucky: the index hit an old peak of 1,881 in July 2016 just before a multi-year slide. From the end-2016 level near 1,443, the index reached about 2,634 by end-2025, a price gain of roughly 1.8x over the period. Buy at the mid-2016 peak instead and the multiple shrinks toward 1.4x; buy at the post-earthquake low of 961 in 2015 and it balloons to 2.7x. Same asset, wildly different outcome, decided by the month you bought.

Price alone understates equity, though. Nepali companies pay heavily in cash dividends and bonus shares, plausibly 3 to 5% a year on top of the price index. Fold that in and the Rs 9 lakh price-only figure climbs toward Rs 12 to 13 lakh, enough to clear the FD and the inflation hurdle comfortably. The brutal part is the path: the index peaked at an all-time high of 3,227 in August 2021 and was still below it in 2026, so anyone who bought the 2021 top sat on years of paper losses. The NEPSE vs SIP vs FD case study walks through what that volatility does to real money.

FD: the safe one that inflation ate

A fixed deposit rolled over annually across this decade earned a moving rate: a low near 5.3% in 2016, double-digit spikes during the 2018 and 2022 to 2023 liquidity crunches, and back down to around 5% by 2026. Average it to about 7.5% and Rs 5 lakh compounds to roughly Rs 10.3 lakh before tax over ten years. Net of the 6% TDS on interest, the effective rate drops to around 7%, leaving about Rs 9.75 lakh.

Set that against the Rs 8.5 lakh you needed just to keep pace with inflation, and the FD's verdict is clear: it preserved your capital and added a thin real return, but it did not build wealth. In the high-inflation years its real return was negative, a point the FD interest tax post makes with the after-inflation math. An FD is a place to keep money you will need soon, not a place to grow money you will not.

The part the table hides: getting your money back out

Returns are only half the story. What it costs to exit, and how fast you can, separates these assets as much as the CAGR does.

Asset	Liquidity	Exit cost
Gold	Same day at a dealer	15 to 20% making-charge spread on jewellery; tighter on bullion
Land	Months to sell	5% CGT if held over 5 years, 7.5% if under; plus commission
NEPSE	T+2, sell any trading day	Broker commission 0.24 to 0.36%, plus 5 to 7.5% CGT on the gain
FD	Within a working day	Premature penalty of 1 to 3% if broken early; 6% TDS on interest

This is where land's headline gain gets humbled. You cannot sell three aana of a four-aana plot to fund an emergency, and a sale takes months and a 5 to 7.5% tax bite. Gold and an FD are the liquid ones; NEPSE sits in between, fast to sell but volatile about when you are forced to. The share trading costs post has the full friction math for equities.

What this does and does not tell you

The comparison is an illustration, not a forecast, and three caveats keep it honest:

One lump sum, perfect patience. Real investing involves entry timing, top-ups, and withdrawals. The numbers assume none of that.
The land figure is an estimate. No clean index exists. I would trust the gold and FD numbers far more than the land one.
The past decade was unusual for gold. A high-teens gold run is not a law of nature. The next ten years will not rhyme with the last ten just because this table is tidy.

What it does tell you is directional and worth keeping: the "safe" FD barely cleared inflation, equity rewarded patience but punished timing, gold ran hard on forces outside Nepal's control, and land grew but locked your money up to do it. That shape is more useful than any single multiple.

What you actually need to know

Gold won this decade, the FD barely beat inflation. Roughly 5x against barely clearing the 5 to 5.5% inflation hurdle. That gap is the headline.
Match the asset to the job, not the league table. Money you need soon belongs in an FD whatever its return; money you will not touch for years is where equity and land earn their volatility and illiquidity.
The frictions decide as much as the returns. Land's tax and illiquidity, gold's making-charge spread, NEPSE's timing risk. A high CAGR with a 7.5% exit tax and a six-month sale is not the same rupee as a liquid one.

Want your own four-asset look-back run on real numbers you actually invested? Email parjanya57@gmail.com and I will build the table with your figures.

This post is part of the Nepal Money Basics guide — the investing section.