Kathmandu, January 31

Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) has paid a total of Rs 1.14 billion to Citizen Investment Trust (CIT) and Employees Provident Fund (EPF) today.

The national flag carrier paid Rs 665 million towards repayment for the widebody aircraft and Rs 348 million for the narrow-body aircraft that it had purchased by taking loans from the two state-owned financial institutions.

NAC had earlier taken a loan of Rs 24 billion from CIT and EPF to purchase two wide-body Airbus A320- 200 aircraft. As per the loan agreement, NAC has to pay back the loan in 60 instalments.

Moreover, NAC has to pay each instalment every three months. This is the fourth instalment for the wide-body aircraft.

Although the national flag carrier had cleared the first instalment, it was struggling to pay the remaining instalments.

Hence, NAC had sought financial support from the government. “After we began flight operations in the Kathmandu-Osaka sector, we are gradually overcoming our financial issues. Moreover, increased flights in the Kathmandu-Delhi route have also become a monetary boon for the corporation,” said Archana Khadka, spokesperson for NAC. Likewise, NAC has also implemented expenditure saving method to save unnecessary expenses.

Khadka further said that flights to and from Osaka have been running smoothly though the occupancy is not full.

“We will also be operating flights in the Kathmandu-Narita sector, which will benefit us more as Narita is a good market for Nepal,” she stated. NAC is preparing to operate flights to Narita from March 2.

Meanwhile, NAC’s much-awaited flight to China is likely to be postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. “Earlier we had announced to operate flights to Guangzhou from March 15, but now we will probably postpone the date,” she said, “We cannot take any risk of operating flights in such a condition.

So we may postpone the China flights.” She further said that NAC will soon operate all the aircraft in the domestic sector as well.