April 6: The foreign currency notes left as offerings by the visitors in Lumbini are to be now exchanged. Siddharthanagar-based Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) office and Lumbini Development Trust (LDT) have signed an agreement on exchanging the foreign currency notes, which had not been exchanged since a long time.    
LDT treasurer Dhundi Raj Bhattarai and acting director of NRB Siddharthanagar office Shanti Prasad Pandey on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding for exchanging the foreign currency of 20 different countries.    
The highest amount of foreign currency that has been collected as offerings and donation in Lumbini is from Myanmar, LDT treasurer Bhattarai said. He added that the currency notes of Sri Lanka, Mexico, Iraq, Brunei, Lebanon, Peru, Uganda, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Oman among other countries are also in the collection.    
These foreign currency notes left at the Mayadevi Temple as donation and offering had been lying idle for a long time, as they are not included in the list of convertible currencies issued by NRB.     
Although LDT had, from time to time, made initiation to exchange these currency notes, they could not be converted, as they are not in NRB's list of convertible foreign currencies.    
With the NRB and LDT entering into agreement for converting these foreign currency notes, foreign currency equivalent to Rs 7.4 million that remained to be converted since fiscal year 2014/15 will go in the process of exchange.    
"We had brought up the issue of the foreign currency given as donation or offerings by the visitors coming to Lumbini lying idle as it could not be exchanged, when NRB Governor Maha Prasad Adhikari came to Rupandehi. We also handed him a memorandum, drawing his attention on this issue. An agreement has been reached in principle according to which NRB will exchange this foreign currency," LDT treasurer Bhattarai said. -- RSS