KATHMANDU: Economic Digest, a daily morning email digest, is basically a relatable summation of important business news from Nepal into easy-to-understand summaries.
NTA urges bank loan arrangement without collateral
The National Trade Association (NTA) has called for arrangements of loan flow without collateral in the upcoming monetary policy.
General Secretary of Baikuntha Dahal has asked for arrangements of loan flow to entrepreneurs without any collateral in a bid to protect the COVID-19 battered economy.
Dahal said that the monetary policy has to be business-friendly, and should come up with an instrument to address the problems of the business sector that has been adversely affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
According to him, businesspersons have expected that the monetary policy would help revitalize the hardest hit businesspersons.
Finance Minister Khatiwada says MCC Compact on hold
The government has informed the USA that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC Compact) was now on hold. With the expiry of the deadline to endorse the compact by the parliament two days back, the Finance Ministry wrote a missive to the US in this regard.
The delay in the endorsement of the MCC compact by the parliament was the effect of intra-party wrangling in the ruling Nepal Communist Party.
Now, with the pending of huge assistance, Nepal is likely to witness negative impacts on its development projects.
Finance Minister Dr. Yubaraj Khatiwada said the ongoing budget session of the federal parliament was prolonged due to COVID-19.
So the US was informed that the MCC compact aimed at the development of energy and transport sectors could not be endorsed by the parliament at present.
He however said the government was for the implementation of MCC compact.
Gautam Buddha Int’l Airport construction deadline extended till Dec
The under-construction Gautam Buddha International Airport in Bhairahawa will not be operational before next March.
The deadline for the construction of the much-talked-about airport has been extended till December 2020. Earlier, the target was to complete the construction by March 31, 2020, and bring the airport into operation within three months.
Accordingly, the airport was to come into operation by mid-July. The project started in 2015 and was expected to be completed in December 2017.
As the construction could not be completed within that deadline, it was targeted to be completed on March 31, 2020, as per the revised schedule.
Since the construction was not completed even at that time, the deadline has been extended yet again.
However, Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Yogesh Bhattarai said that works could not be completed due to the lockdown enforced to stem the spread of coronavirus.
(Compiled and prepared by Swastik Aryal and Nitish Lal Shrestha)
Nepal Economic Digest is a daily morning email digest, basically relatable summations of the most important business news, happenings from Nepal into easy-to-understand summaries.
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