BAIDHAYA INVITED

MOHAN BAIDHAYA INVITED FOR TALKS
Kathmandu, 17 July: The HLPM which met Wednesday later sent an
invitation to CPN Maoist Chairman Mohan Baidhaya , to join talks
for a roundtable conference.
Maoist Chairman Prachanda sent letter after assuming leadership of the four party mechanism for the second time.
The parties agreed  to hold a dialogue with coalition partner of CPN Maoist as well.
Meanwhile, the mechanism decided Wednesday to complete the first draft of a constitution in six months and promulgate a basic law in one year.
The assembly then should  work as parliament, according to the
parties.
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DEPOSIT BASE CROSSES RS. ONE TRILLION
Kathmandu, 17 July: The total deposit amount handled by 31 commercial banks in the country has crossed Rs one trillion as of this week, The Himalayan Times reports..

With the closing of the last fiscal year, class ‘A’ banks seem to have crossed the monetary

authority’s estimation of 15 per cent increment.

The amount of deposits with commercial banks by the end of last week of the last fiscal year stands at Rs 1002 billion which is a growth of almost 16 per cent in the last one year.

Deposits parked at commercial banks in the corresponding period of the previous year stood

at Rs 862 billion.

Though the financial sector briefly witnessed liquidity crunch in the first few months of 2013, the increased capital expenditure and strong dollar induced increased remittance and conversion of dollar deposits to Nepali rupee accounts which also drew money to the banks.

“Near the end of the last fiscal year, a large number of government funds were released that flushed the banking sector with deposits, hence deposits increased substantially in the third quarter of the last fiscal,” pointed out vice president of Nepal Bankers’ Association Upendra Poudyal.

Since the first few months into the last fiscal year, deposit growth, especially in commercial banks, was slow-paced.

The average rate of deposit growth in commercial banks remained at 3.1 per cent.

The liquidity crunch had even pushed the inter-bank lending rate to as high as 6.8 per cent

in mid-April.

In mid-February too, interbank lending rate was at 6.7 per cent. It then subsided but once again

in the first week of March it reached 5.8 per cent — moving in tandem with the liquidity situation of banks.

Higher interbank rate points out the acute need of cash for banks and vice versa.

Most importantly, banks themselves realised that deposits were flying to development banks and finance companies due to the reduced interest offered for deposits by commercial banks.

Of late, commercial banks are also offering interest rates as high as eight per cent for fixed

deposits and four to six per cent on savings deposits.

“Interest rate could be somehow responsible for attracting individual deposits but it is difficult to single it out as a major reason for growing deposits,” pointed out Poudyal who is

also the chief executive officer of NMB Bank.

Moreover, in the past one year, the exchange rate of the US dollar has appreciated by almost eight per cent. “The surge in the value of one unit of the dollar has led to dollar account holders converting their dollar balance in their accounts into local currency, which has increased the amount of deposits in Nepali currency,” informed Poudyal.

Also, due to the increment in the value of the dollar in terms of Nepali currency, remittance income of Nepal increased to Rs 388.4 billion by mid-June.

The amount recorded by the central bank is money remitted through formal banking channels, thus, the money reaches bank deposits.

Though the amount of increased deposit is good news for the banking sector, in the last couple of weeks lending has crawled up in a snail-like speed.

In the first two weeks of July, lending made by commercial banks increased by Rs two billion as banks are apprehensive about giving loans in the last quarter due to provisioning

requirements.

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EC ATTEMPTS TO JUSTIFY DECLINE N NUMBER OF VOTERS

Kathmandu, 17 July: The Election Commission registered 12.1 million voters until Sunday and expects the number to reach over 12.2 million when the final tallies are counted. But still there will be a gap of 3.8 million voters compared to the number of eligible votersm The Himalayan Times reports..

According to Rudra Suwal, Director, Central Bureau of Statistics, the population of eligible voters (people above 18 years of age), which was 15.4 million in 2012, has reached 16 million this year. “Every year we add over half a million population,” he said.

Election Commissioner Ram Bhakta PV Thakur, however, said the gap between the registered voters and eligible voters was not unjustified because over three million people who are working as migrant workers in foreign countries have not been included in the list. “During the last CA elections, some people had registered their names at multiple places and our new system has rectified this,” Thakur clarified, adding, “If you take the number of migrant workers plus the death rate, it is clear that only two-three lakh eligible voters are missing from the list, which is not quite unexpected.” It is estimated that 2.2 million Nepali migrant workers are in Gulf countries alone. Chief Election Commissioner Nilkantha Uprety said that the EC would not extend the time for voters’ registration, as it could interfere in its work-plan. Asked what the impact of the Supreme Court’s recent order would be on the election process, Uprety said he had not received the order yet and could not say about the impact.

Yesterday, the SC ordered the EC to stay its decision to register the names of those voters who had their names in the 2008 voters’ list but were yet to acquire citizenship certificates for some reason.

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