Alex Ritson

Now, the thing is, economic vibrancy is needed in Bhutan.

I mean, it may give an image of happy peasants tending their flocks.

In fact, Bhutan famously decided to measure its gross national happiness as well as GDP.

In fact, there's very serious unemployment problems in Bhutan.

Lots of the population have to go abroad for work.

It does have some sources of money.

It sells hydroelectric power to neighbouring India and also has tourism, but that's very limited.

So the idea is to create this new tech city.

One interesting thing, the billion dollars you mentioned that's going to be invested, it currently holds that money in cryptocurrency.

Bhutan started buying cryptocurrency in 2019, may have made some money out of that.

but the amount it's made is actually a state secret.

Sounds interesting, but is it going to work?

I don't know.

I mean, it's very hard to work out what this new spiritual city is going to actually do.

It seems that financial services will be at the centre of the plans.

It does have a very educated workforce, but it's a very small workforce, so I don't think any major banks are going to open themselves there, nor can it be a major high-tech manufacturing hub.

However, Bhutan sits at a very strategically interesting spot between India and China.

India is very keen to keep up its own influence there and to keep China out.

So I do think there's a chance that you'll see India prepared to invest a lot of money in Galefu, but that would be for reasons less to do with karma and mindfulness, be more about hard-nosed geopolitics.

Paul Moss.