Kathmandu, September 20
The central bank says it is distributing new banknotes for use during Dashain as dakshina from Monday this year.
The Nepal Rastra Bank Director Rewati Nepal says the public can exchange the new notes from the NRB central office in Baluwatar and its provincial offices. Major commercial and development banks, as well as finance companies, will also distribute the notes.
Nepal says the central bank expects to exchange Rs 37 billion in the next few days. Other banks have already received notes worth Rs 4 billion in total for the exchange, according to him.
It has been decades that Nepal’s central bank has been letting common people exchange their old banknotes with the new ones ahead of Dashain, the biggest festival of Nepalis.
In the previous years, thousands would queue up in front of designated banks to get the new notes so that they could give them to their family members and relatives as dakshina while putting tika. However, there would not be big crowds to exchange the notes this time as several other banks will also distribute them, according to the NRB.
Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the NRB had not distributed new banknotes last year. However, the bank is resuming the trading owing to a significant decrease in the daily infection rate.
