Kathmandu, March 13:

The Rastriya Banijya Bank (RBB), a state-owned commercial bank, is preparing to serve retirement letters to about 600 employees under the fourth Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) by the end of April.

According to a senior management official of RBB, the VRS scheme will be applicable to all employees of RBB from the senior-level to lower-level with ‘attractive incentives’, compared to previous VRSs on offer.

Janardan Acharya, spokesperson at the RBB management team, disclosed to The Himalayan Times that the fourth VRS is an initiative of the bank to reduce staff at all level and inject the new blood as there were cases of pending promotions for many years and other obstacles on the human resource development front.

Despite stiff protests during earlier days of the VRS implementation, the new management seems determined to make a change in the whole organisational set up by adopting modern techniques.

Acharya said that at the close of third VRS, a total of 2,227 have left the bank under the VRS and Compulsory Retirement Scheme (CRS) which has been one of the major initiatives taken by the new management of RBB to expedite reforms as to human resource development sector.

The implementation of fourth VRS will start during the first week of April and will remain operational throughout the month, according to the bank. However, Acharya did not disclose other mechanisms to be incorporated while implementing VRS.

Talking about the extra benefits being offered to employees for opting for VRS, Acharya said, “They will get about Rs 300,000 extra compared to what they will get after normal retirement.” The consolidated amount is very ‘productive’ for employees if they like to take the offer now which does not come always, he commented.

Talking about the performance of the bank, Subash Maharjan, one of the members of the management team of the bank said that the bank has improved its overall performance during the past six months of fiscal year 2005-06. Maharjan said that the operating profit of the bank at Rs 284 million has tripled compared to the same period last year. Similarly, the bank has posted a net profit of Rs 508 million reflecting an increase of around 23 per cent over the same period last year.

An amount of Rs 297 million has been recovered as interest from bad loans during the half yearly review, said Maharjan. According to him, NPA level of the bank has declined to 51.22 per cent from an earlier 58 per cent.

Total deposits of the bank at the close of six months in the current fiscal year has reached Rs 41,215 million. Similarly, investment has been limited to Rs 8,002 million only.