July 23: Nepal Rastra Bank has resumed the concessional loan programme after a gap of five months. The scheme, which was halted in mid-December, has been revived by the central bank since mid-May.

According to the data published by NRB, 644 loans worth Rs 1.87 billion have been approved from mid-May to mid-June alone under this scheme. Banks and financial institutions (BFIs) have invested Rs 258.34 billion to 147,510 borrowers till mid-June. Of that, 231 billion rupees are yet to be recovered.

Till mid-May, 146,866 borrowers had taken subsidized loans of Rs 256.47 billion rupees. Out of that amount, Rs 232.4 billion remains to be recovered.

NRB had informally stopped loan approval since mid-December after the government stopped payment of interest on subsidized loans due to the reduction in revenue collection following the ban on the import of some goods and slowdown of economic activities. Executive Director of NRB Dr Prakash Kumar Shrestha said that the concessional loan programme was postponed for some time.

The government has announced that the subsidized loans will be restructured based on the loan effectiveness study in the budget of the current fiscal year. The government had allocated Rs 13.59 billion for this scheme in the previous fiscal year. But for the current FY, it has been reduced by Rs 2 billion to Rs 11.59 billion.

Although there has been an increase in subsidized loans, it is being criticized for not being effective and for being misused by those who have access to it.

NRB is also studying the effectiveness of subsidized loans.

According to the procedures related to subsidized loans, banks have been providing such loans in 10 sectors, namely commercial agriculture and animal husbandry, educated youth self-employment, projects of youth returning from abroad, women's enterprise, Dalit business development, higher technical and vocational education, construction of earthquake-affected private housing, textile industry, technical and professional and youth self-employment programme.

Under this scheme, banks can set the interest rate by adding a maximum of 2 percentage points to their base rate. Out of that, there is a provision of 6 percent subsidy for women entrepreneurship loans and 5 percent for other loans.