KATHMANDU: Ministry of Industry (MoI) felicitated 51 women entrepreneurs on Monday. Minister for Industry Mahesh Basnet felicitated the entrepreneurs with a cash prize Rs 5,000 each.

On the occasion, Minister Basnet said the government would support women entrepreneurs as the industries run by them were more successful. He also shared that 50 entrepreneurs were killed in the quake and few industries were damaged.

He further added that such affected entrepreneurs would get loan at low interest rates. It shall now be mandatory for industries to adopt insurance policy, he added.

Secretary at the MoI, Jay Mukunda Khanal said the national economy would be stronger only after the development of small and medium-scale industries in the country. He added the ministry is collecting the details of losses suffered by industries in the recent quake. — RSS

Bad loan ratio to rise

MUMBAI: Indian banks’ gross bad loan ratio could rise to as high as 5.9 per cent during the fiscal year to March 2016 after a rule change made debt restructuring costlier, rating agency ICRA Ltd said on Monday. ICRA, an associate of Moody’s Investors Service, said it expected the lenders’ gross non-performing loans as a percentage of total loans to be between 5.3 per cent and 5.9 per cent in the fiscal year 2015-16, compared with 4.4 per cent as of March 2015. New rules effective from April this year require banks to make 15 per cent provision for restructuring loans, treating those at par with bad loans. Earlier they were providing five per cent for restructured loans. In absolute numbers, gross bad loans could rise to as much as INR 4.7 trillion by March 2016 from INR 3.1 trillion a year earlier, ICRA said. — Reuters