Nepal Statutory late-payment interest
Nepal Statutory late-payment interest: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Nepal fixes no statutory or default interest rate on money debts. The National Civil Code 2074 leaves the rate to the parties' deed, denies interest altogether where the deed is silent, and caps only the total — so there is no legal rate to serve.
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| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | National Civil (Code) Act, 2074 (2017), Chapter on transactions of borrowing or lending, ss. 478-481: s. 478 entitles a creditor to interest on a loan at the rate the parties agree in the deed and states no statutory rate; s. 479 provides that where the deed of transaction does not provide for interest the creditor shall not collect interest from the debtor; s. 480 bars compound interest; s. 481 provides that the interest recoverable shall not exceed the principal |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | secondary — Corroborated, but the primary instrument was NOT read (usually the publishing host blocks automated access). The official English translation of the National Civil Code 2074 is published only as an image-only PDF with no machine-readable text layer, so the section content here is taken from consistent Nepali practitioner statements of ss. 478-481 rather than from a verbatim reading of the official text; the substantive conclusion — that the Code fixes no default rate — is corroborated across those sources. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
REFUSAL — Nepal has no legal interest rate. The National Civil Code 2074 (in force 17 August 2018) does not supply a fallback percentage for money obligations: interest is a creature of the deed. Section 478 lets a creditor charge interest at the rate agreed and fixes no statutory figure, floor or ceiling. Section 479 goes further in the opposite direction from most civil-law systems — if the deed of transaction says nothing about interest, the creditor may collect NONE, and only the principal is recoverable. There is therefore no rate that attaches automatically to an overdue debt, and no equivalent of an EU-style late-payment entitlement. THE FIGURE MOST OFTEN QUOTED IS NOT LAW: '10% per annum' circulates widely as Nepal's default lending rate. It is a market convention for unsecured private loans and a legacy of the old Muluki Ain ceiling, not a rate stated in the Civil Code 2074; serving it would be presenting practice as statute. WHAT THE CODE DOES FIX ARE LIMITS, NOT RATES: section 480 bars compound interest, with compound interest wrongly collected set off against the principal or refunded; section 481 caps cumulative interest at the amount of the principal, so a creditor can never recover more than principal plus an equal sum in interest however long the default runs. Both are ceilings on a contractual rate and cannot be read as an entitlement. Nepal Rastra Bank sets the bank rate and policy rate for banks and financial institutions as monetary-policy instruments and publishes base-rate rules for their lending; none of these is a legal interest rate available to an ordinary creditor. No civil/commercial split exists.
Get it programmatically
curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/np/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/np/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/np/statutory-interestOther Nepal series: NRB policy rate (fixed repo rate) · 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 · Personal income tax bands · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Oman · Pakistan · Philippines · Qatar · Saudi Arabia · all 28