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Microfinance And Agro Friendly Monetary Policy

  1 min 48 sec to read

--BY Siromani Dhungana
 
Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has brought out a monetary policy that is specially friendly to strengthening micro-finance and agriculture sectors.
 
In the policy announced on Sunday, NRB has cut the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) by one percent. With the introduction of new monetary policy, the category ‘A’ financial institution has to maintain CRR at 5 per cent, while category ‘B’ and category ‘C’ institutions have to maintain it at 4.5 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively.
 
Likewise, the policy has fixed the Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) of 12 percent, 9 percent and 8 percent for category A, B and C financial institutions, respectively which is one per cent decrease compared to the previous provision. 
 
The central bank has also reduced the refinancing rate for agriculture, hydro-power and others productive sectors to 5 per cent from earlier 6 percent. 
 
The central bank failed to address demands put forth by the Nepal Bankers’ Association (NBA). It has provisioned that the commercial bank has to have a total of 20 percent of outstanding loans in ‘productive’ sector including at least 12 percent in agriculture and energy sector by end the of May 15, 2015. The association has demanded to relax the provision saying the compulsory provision can create unnecessary pressure to the banks. 
 
Similarly, bankers’ association had also asked the central bank to relax the provision of Credit-Deposit Ratio (CDR) and increase its limitation to 85 percent. But the central bank did not change the provision of CDR from 80 percent. 
 
Similarly, Nepal Rastra Bank did not bring any provision to relax real estate lending. 
 
NRB says the new monetary policy will help to attain 5.5 per cent economic growth rate as targeted by the government budget for FY 2013-14 and restrict the inflation to 8 per cent in the fiscal year.
 

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