“Govt is being lackadaisical to ensure security to BFIs”

KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 26: Nepal Bankers’ Association (NBA) has lamented that the government is showing a lack of interest in taking measures necessary to ensure the security of Nepali banks and financial institutions (BFIs) President of the NBA, Sunil KC did so while speaking at a press conference held today in the capital.

” Currently,  fake rumours are being spread in the market that some banks and financial institutions are going bankrupt. Similarly, there have been shady attempts to prompt common depositors to withdraw their money from such institutions,” he said adding,”This has posed a great challenge to the overall security of Nepali BFIs which together mobilise as high amount of capital as Rs 719 billion  . However, the government does appear interested in helping resolve the very challenge.”

According to him, some major problems the  Nepali banking industry are dimishing distributable profits, abnormal decrease in interest rates, gross non-performing loans, continous decline in the return on equity (RoE). Particularly specifying the the RoI, he said it, which has been going down continously for the last 4 years, stood at a just 9  percent in the last quarter.

KC also poinpointed to an increasing volume of non-performing loans as another prime hurdle. He attributed this to slowdown in the sectors of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and construction.