Banks' deposit touches Rs 565 billion

REPUBLICA
KATHMANDU, Sept 5: Propelled mainly by an astonishing rise of over 50 percent in remittance income, deposit mobilization as well as lending volume of Nepal´s 26 national level commercial banks recorded impressive growths of over 30 percent at the end of last fiscal year.
A central bank statistics released recently revealed that total deposit mobilization rose by 32.27 percent to reach Rs 563.6 billion by the end of mid-July 2009. Total deposit mobilization was Rs 426.08 billion at the end of the last fiscal year. Similarly, the total lending volume, that includes loans and advances, touched to Rs 398.14 billion, which was 31 percent more than last year´s lending worth Rs 302.91 billion.
State-owned Rastriya Banijya Bank (RBB) continued to be the largest bank in terms of deposit volume. According to the central bank, the RBB has mobilized deposit worth Rs 67.98 billion, which was a rise of 17.2 percent against last year´s figure. The semi-state-owned bank Nepal Bank Limited consolidated its second position whereas Nepal Investment Bank (NIB), which has a total deposit worth of Rs 46.70 billion, emerged as the third largest depositor. However, in the private bank category, the NIB remained as the largest bank in terms of deposit mobilization volume.
The NIB, which has made an impressive progress by expanding its banking base, emerged as the largest lender of the country. According to the data, the total volume of loans and advances extended by the bank has touched Rs 36.25 billion against Rs 27.14 billion recorded at the end of Mid-July 2008.
Among the major deposit categories, saving deposits that is a popular saving instrument among middle class continued to attract largest deposit worth of Rs 260 billion against Rs 211.45 billion recorded last year. Likewise, time deposits, popularly known as fixed deposit, also recorded a whopping rise of 34.8 percent to 141.26 billion followed by current deposits -- widely used for business transactions -- that witnessed a growth of 27.7 percent to Rs 71.65 billion.
Among of the major lending sector, private sector lending rose by 34.45 percent to Rs 387.45 billion against Rs 288.28 billion recorded during the preceding fiscal year.However, the volume of investment in securities declined by 3.12 percent to Rs 69.26 billion from previous year´s Rs 71.5 billion.