Most commercial banks reduce interest rates on deposits

KATHMANDU, NOVEMBER 17: Most of the commercial banks have reduced the interest rates on their deposits collection effective from Friday. They trimmed down such rates to a single digit for the Nepali month of Mangsir (November 17 to December 16) citing excess liquidity.

For the review period, 13 commercial banks cut down their interest rates on both personal and institutional deposits to less than 10 percent.  Among them, the lowest annual rate has been set by NIC Asia at 8.968 percent, a reduction of 2.035 percent.  NMB Bank has fixed the second lowest interest rate, downsizing by 1.243 percent to 9.76 percent.

The maximum interest rates of these banks on individual deposits have been reduced to 9.632 percent from 9.964 percent while the same on institutional deposits is down to 7.546 percent from 7.8526 percent.

Six commercial banks- Nepal Bank, Citizens, Siddhartha, Laxmi Sunrise Kumari and Prime Commercial- have left their interest rates unchanged for the review period.

Compared to the previous month (mid-October to mid-November), only Machhapuchhre Bank has increased the interest rate to 10.60 percent per annum.

Nepali commercial banks will now be offering interest rates on fixed deposits between 5.25 percent and 10.603 percent