December 25: Nepal Rastra Bank has extended the loan restructuring and rescheduling facility provided as relief to the industrialists affected by the economic recession. In order to implement the announcement made in the first quarterly review of the monetary policy, the central bank on Sunday amended the unified directive and extended the facility to restructure and reschedule the loan until mid-April.

In the quarterly review of the monetary policy, the central bank has mentioned that the borrowers who are in trouble due to circumstances will be facilitated through means such as loan restructuring and rescheduling while strict action will be taken against those who intentional default payment of loans.

Accordingly, the central bank made arrangements for banks and financial institutions to recover ten percent of the outstanding loans’ interest and reschedule the loan until mid-April based on applications filed by the borrowers who have been in trouble due to recession. Prior to this, the NRB had fixed the deadline for rescheduling of loans until mid-January.

The central bank has made arrangements for restructuring and rescheduling of any loans up to Rs 50 million provided to agriculture and forestry, fisheries, mining, beverage production, non-food production, metal products, machinery and electronic tools, transportation, storage and communication, wholesale and retail, tourism, education, health and construction sectors.

Upon request from the borrower, banks can decide on restructuring the loans after analyzing the cash flow and income of the industry/business.

However, one of the preconditions set by the central bank for rescheduling the loans is that the loans should be active loans as of mid-July this year.

Similarly, banks need to set aside 5 percent provisioning fund for rescheduling or restructuring loans.