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Foreign employment bonds likely to be issued this week
KATHMANDU, JUN 20 -
Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) is preparing to issue foreign employment bonds within this week. The central bank said that it had completed the necessary homework to issue the much hyped bonds.
The government had announced through the budget this year that it would issue bonds worth Rs. 7 billion in order to use the remittance received by the country in development activities.
“We are planning to issue a notice regarding the issuance of the bonds within two-three days,” said a senior official of NRB. A meeting of the open market committee headed by the deputy governor will decide the issue date soon, said the official. The committee will also decide whether to issue the bonds worth Rs. 7 billion and its maturity period. Buyers will get an annual interest of 9.75 percent.
Bond buyers will not have to pay any additional fees while sending money to Nepal and the subscription amount will also get an income tax waiver.
The central bank has recently selected eight companies as sales agents for the bonds out of nine applicants. The selected sales agents are Himalayan Bank, International Money Express, Sewa Money Transfer, Prabhu Money Transfer, Prabhu Finance Company, Incentive Money Transfer, Samik Remit Company and Delta Money Transfer Company. They will collect money from Nepali migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea and deposit the money in the account of the central bank.
“They can send the names of the subscribers individually or collectively, said Gopal Kafle, spokesman of NRB. The sales agents will get a commission of 0.25 percent of the collected money.
The central bank has also fixed the countries the companies can operate. Among them, three have got permission to work in four countries while the remaining five companies have been permitted to work in a single country.
However, the companies appointed as agents have expressed inability to work for a commission of just 0.25 percent. “The commission amount is too low and the partner companies in the Gulf countries and Malaysia cannot help us in collecting money with just 0.25 percent commission,” said Rajendra Sherchan, chief executive officer of Prabhu Money Transfer.
He added that they would be ready to work if the commission was fixed at the level that they are charging currently. “We can work with a commission equivalent to 18 riyals from the Gulf countries and 12-15 ringgits in the case of Malaysia,” said Sherchan.
An NRB official said that NRB was discussing the possibility of increasing the commission, but added that they could not increase it by as much as was being demanded by the agents.
Sales agentS countries permitted
HIMALAYAN BANK Malaysia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar
IME Malaysia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar
Prabhu Money Malaysia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar
Prabhu Finance Qatar
Delta Malaysia
Sewa Money Qatar
Sramik Remit Qatar
Incentive Money Malaysia
Posted on: 2010-06-21 08:16
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