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Kathmandu Saturday January 05, 2002 Paush 21, 2058.
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Low saving
This refers to the news story entitled :
"New govt bond gets cold response", dated January 3, 2002, TKP.
The government should have realised, before
it attempted to mobilise internal resources, how difficult a task it would be. The
Nepalese economy is so small and simple that there is nothing to hide. Any attempt to
activate the economic growth will not take time, given its small scale. I mean the Maoist
insurgency will not affect much the Nepali economy. Our economy is comparable to that of a
departmental store in America. So any attempt to boost the growth of our economy will not
take time, once the Maoists are wiped out.
However, one must know that mobilisation of
internal resources will not bear friuts soon. Most of the Nepalese are poor and
uneducated, so they are not aware of any economic activity, forget the banking system. I
think the majority of our population still do not use banks for keeping their money.
Rather, we prefer (and approach) local landlords for loans. One reason is that the
Nepalese bank lending system is so poor that officials at state run banks ask for bribes
before they extend loans. Secondly, the low interest rate has not attracted even civil
servants who have little or no saving.
Corruption has been so severe that the two
state run banks -- the Nepal Bank Limited and Nepal Banijya Bank -- have been on the verge
of collapse, thanks to depositors who continue to overlook such a state of our banking
system.
Radha Sharma
Baneshwor, Kathmandu |
