Bhairahawa, June 5

All the local bodies of Province 5 now have access to banks. The province has a total of 109 local bodies.

According to Nepal Rastra Bank Siddharthanagar Assistant Director Ramesh Neupane, lately, a commercial bank has set up its branch in Sunchhahari Rural Municipality of Rolpa.

“Sunchhahari was the only local body that didn’t have access to banking service, but with a bank opening its branch here recently, the province has become the first to provide all its local bodies with access to banking services,” he said.

As per a latest Nepal Rastra Bank survey, 725 local bodies out of the total 753 in the country have access to banking services now.

While some 134 out of the total 137 local bodies in Province 1 have access to bank, all but two local bodies each in Province 2, 3 and 4 lack access to banking services.

These provinces have 136, 119 and 85 local bodies respectively.

The scenario is worse in Karnali Province where the number of local bodies enjoying access to banking services stand at a just 12.

The province has a total of 79 local bodies. Seven local bodies in Far-west Province lack access to banking service till date.

Earlier, Nepal Rastra Bank and the Finance Ministry had instructed national level banks to make sure that all local bodies across the country are linked by banking network by the end of the current fiscal.