38 pc of the population has banks accounts

With the extension of banking network in the country, around 38 percent of the country’s population has opened the banking accounts by mid-January while the same stood at 31 percent last year.

According to the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) figure, the number of opened banking accounts has reached 10.03 million by mid-January 2013.

Though the number of people opening accounts has increased, only 769,000 have taken loans from the bank and financial institutions (BFIs) licensed by the central bank, according to the central bank statistics.

So far, the number of branches has also reached 30,036 including the branches of all A, B, C and D class BFIs providing banking service to some 10,800 people from each branch.

Similarly, the number of debit and credit card users has also reached 2.23 million and 39,000, respectively while there are total of 1,187 ATM counters of BFIs across the country. nepalnews.com