Kathmandu. Executive Director and Spokesperson of Nepal Rastra Bank, Guru Prasad Poudel, has said that banks and financial institutions still have huge investment potential for the development of hydropower sector. Speaking at a program entitled ‘Challenges of Electronic Infrastructure Development and Way Forward’ organized by the Association of Economic Journalists (EJ) here today, Minister Poudel said that the central bank has made special policy provisions to promote investment in the energy sector. <\/p>\n
According to Poudel, the outstanding loan of banks and financial institutions in the hydropower sector has reached around Rs 500 billion. “The banks have a total loan of Rs 60 trillion. If we invest 15 percent of this in energy, it can reach Rs 900 billion,” he said, “This means that even today banks have the capacity to invest another Rs 400 billion in this sector.” \u2019<\/p>\n
He said that the Nepal Rastra Bank has given special discount on ‘Single Observer Limit’ for infrastructure like hydropower and transmission line. He said although only 25 per cent of the core capital can be invested in other sectors, it has been increased to 50 per cent for the power sector. <\/p>\n
Referring to another important policy brought by the Nepal Rastra Bank to provide relief to energy entrepreneurs, Poudel said, “In other sectors, the entire loan should be categorized as bad loan if the loan is not paid in a single installment. But in the case of hydropower, we have adopted a flexible policy so that only the installments that have been stopped are classified. He said that this will prevent the credit rating of industrialists from being negatively affected. <\/p>\n
In order to reduce the burden on the banks during the construction of the project, only 1 percent loan loss should be managed throughout the grace period. He also said that the central bank has also provided the facility of capitalization of interest during the construction period in case of projects larger than 50 MW. <\/p>\n
Spokesperson Poudel said that the bank deposits alone would not be able to meet the growing demand for energy, adding that emphasis should be laid on ‘financial mix’. <\/p>\n
“Not only bank loans, but also energy bonds, debentures and International Climate Fund should be brought into Nepal,” he said. He expressed his confidence that the ‘Green Finance Taxonomy’ recently released by the Nepal Rastra Bank would help in issuing international ‘Green Bonds’ and attract foreign investment. <\/p>\n
Speaking on the occasion, Poudel said that the NRB will always bring innovative and supportive policies to meet the energy goals of the government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kathmandu. Executive Director and Spokesperson of Nepal Rastra Bank, Guru Prasad Poudel, has said that banks and financial institutions still have huge investment potential for the development of hydropower sector. Speaking at a program entitled ‘Challenges of Electronic Infrastructure Development and Way Forward’ organized by the Association of Economic Journalists (EJ) here today, Minister Poudel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":307318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45117,45159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bank-finance-en","category-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307322,"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307321\/revisions\/307322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media\/307318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}