Nepal NRB policy rate (fixed repo rate)

What this value means

BS YEAR: the level was set in the first-quarter review of the Monetary Policy for FY 2082/83 BS (2025/26), dated 2082 Mangsir 15 = 1 December 2025, and carried unchanged into FY 2083/84 BS (2026/27). CORRIDOR — SERVE THE MIDDLE RATE, NOT THE EDGES. NRB runs a three-rate interest rate corridor and all three are quoted as 'rates' in Nepali press: floor = standing deposit facility rate / deposit collection rate 2.75%; middle = policy rate (fixed repo rate) 4.25%, THIS SERIES; ceiling = standing liquidity facility (SLF) rate 5.75%, which under a rule in force since 16 August 2012 is set identical to the BANK RATE, so bank rate is also 5.75%. Table A4 of NRB's Macroeconomic Report, July 2026 prints the whole corridor month by month and confirms 4.25% from mid-December 2025 through mid-May 2026 (https://www.nrb.org.np/contents/uploads/2026/07/Macroeconomic_Report_July_2026.pdf). The corridor is now symmetric: 4.25% +/- 150 bps. OPERATING TARGET: para 13 of the FY 2083/84 Monetary Policy makes the weighted average interbank rate of banks and financial institutions the operating target and commits NRB to open market operations that keep it 'around the policy rate' — in practice it has sat well BELOW the policy rate (2.73% at mid-June 2026) because the banking system is running large excess liquidity, so anyone using the interbank rate as a proxy for the policy stance will read Nepal far too loose. STRUCTURAL — THE PEG TO INDIA IS THE REAL ANCHOR. Nepal has run a fixed exchange rate against the Indian rupee since 1993 at INR 1 = NPR 1.60 (NRB quotes it as INR 100 = NPR 160.00 buy / 160.15 sell, published on nrb.org.np/forex/ under the heading 'Fixed by Nepal Rastra Bank', separate from the open-market rates for other currencies). Para 12 of the FY 2083/84 Monetary Policy states in terms that the fixed exchange rate of the Nepalese rupee against the Indian rupee 'has been taken as the anchor (अङ्कुश) of monetary policy' and is retained as the INTERMEDIATE TARGET. Because India supplies roughly two-thirds of Nepal's merchandise imports and the peg is defended with reserves, NRB has very limited independent room: its policy rate follows Indian inflation and RBI policy with a lag, and its own analysis reasons from India (para 37 of the first-quarter review projects Nepal's inflation partly off the RBI's 2.6% forecast for India; para 10 of the 11-month macro report sets Nepal's 5.22% inflation against India's 3.93%). Compare series IN (India) in this dataset: the RBI repo rate is 5.25%, one full percentage point ABOVE Nepal's 4.25% — the gap is sustainable only because Nepal's excess liquidity and capital controls insulate it, not because NRB is running an independent stance. DIRECTION OF TRAVEL: easing. 5.00% until mid-July 2025, cut to 4.50% by the annual Monetary Policy for FY 2082/83, cut again to 4.25% on 1 December 2025, then HELD. The 25th Monetary Policy, for FY 2083/84 BS (released 2083 Asar 23 = 7 July 2026, in force from 2083 Shrawan 1 = 17 July 2026), states at para 14 that 'the policy rate, standing deposit facility rate and bank rate under the interest rate corridor have been kept unchanged', and at para 11 targets inflation of around 5.5% and growth of 7.0% with reserves covering at least seven months of imports. ACCESS: NRB publishes the annual Monetary Policy and the quarterly reviews in Nepali first; the English full text lags by about six weeks (the FY 2082/83 English text appeared on 20 August 2025). Both the FY 2083/84 policy and the first-quarter review PDFs are text-extractable, but the first-quarter review uses a legacy Preeti-style font encoding that mangles in most extraction tools — the figures survive, the words do not. Reviews list: https://www.nrb.org.np/category/monetary-policy/ RE-VERIFIED 2026-08-07 against the FY 2083/84 (2026/27) Monetary Policy itself (nrb.org.np/contents/uploads/2026/07/Monetary_Policy-2083_84.pdf, Nepali, Asar 2083): point 14 keeps the policy rate, SDF rate and bank rate unchanged - the earlier 'carried unchanged into FY 2083/84' claim is now document-verified, not asserted. Corridor: 4.25 policy / 5.75 bank rate ceiling / 2.75 SDF floor. effective_from corrected 2025-12-01 -> 2025-12-02: NRB's rates page dates the current level at its implementation (2 Dec 2025), not the Q1-review decision day. Citation moved to NRB's live policy-rates page (states the number and its date; the old Q1-review URL now 302s straight to a PDF, which is what tripped the source-watcher). English full text of the 2083/84 policy typically lands ~mid-August; re-cite it then if preferred. SOURCE URL REPAIRED 2026-08-11, VALUE RE-CONFIRMED UNCHANGED AT 4.25%. NRB's policy-rates page (nrb.org.np/cmfm_rates/policy_rates) now returns HTTP 404 even though the NRB home page still links to it, so the citation moves to a publication that states the number outright: Table A4 of NRB's own Macroeconomic Report, July 2026 prints the interest rate corridor month by month and carries the fixed repo rate at 4.25 from mid-December 2025 through mid-May 2026, the last month tabulated. Point 14 of the Monetary Policy for FY 2083/84 (https://www.nrb.org.np/contents/uploads/2026/07/Monetary_Policy-2083_84.pdf, released 7 July 2026 and in force from 17 July 2026) then keeps the policy rate, standing deposit facility rate and bank rate unchanged, so no change is due before the FY 2083/84 first-quarter review around December 2026. Corridor as at this check: policy rate 4.25, SDF floor 2.75, bank rate and SLF ceiling 5.75. Reaffirmed by the FY2083/84 (2026/27) Monetary Policy, published July 2026, para 14: policy rate, standing deposit facility rate and bank rate all kept unchanged (Monetary_Policy-2083_84-1.pdf on nrb.org.np; the policy is now split across three documents - the 4-page Nepali-only policy, an annual review whose PDF text layer is legacy Preeti-encoded, and the Macroeconomic Report cited here). The nav link /cmfm_rates/policy_rates 404s - do not cite it. Next likely decision point: the first-quarter review, ~Nov-Dec 2026.

Earlier values

Get it programmatically

curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/np/policy-rate
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/np/policy-rate/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/np/policy-rate

Other Nepal series: VAT standard rate · VAT registration threshold · National minimum remuneration · Public holidays · Consumer price inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax standard rate · Withholding tax rates · Statutory late-payment interest · Personal income tax bands · Statutory social-insurance contributions

The same figure elsewhere: Oman · Pakistan · Philippines · Qatar · Saudi Arabia · all 28