ASSESSMENT OF CREDIT RISK IN NEPALI COMMERCIAL BANKS

Abstract

The main objective of the study is to identify the major indicators of credit risk among the Nepali commercial banks. The study is conducted using the sample of 15 commercial banks operated in Nepali economy. One way Fixed Effect Model (FEM) of panel data analysis is used as a major tool of analysis. All the data for the study were obtained from the database of Nepal Rastra Bank for bank specific variables and database of World Bank for macroeconomic variables for the year 2002/03 to 2014/15. The credit risk among the commercial banks in Nepal was regressed on bank specific variables such as liquidity, capital adequacy ratio, bank size, and interest spread. Similarly, the effects of macro-economic variables such as GDP growth, rate of inflation and interbank interest rate were also examined along with bank specific variables in identifying credit risk in Nepali commercial banks. The study reveals that liquidity has the significant positive impact on credit risk in Nepali commercial banks. In contrast, capital adequacy ratio and interest spread have the significant negative impact on credit risk. The analysis further confirmed that bank size and interest spread both have no any clear direction of impact on credit risk. Moving towards the GDP growth, credit risk in Nepali commercial banks is negatively fluctuates with GDP growth, however, the statistics show the coefficients are insignificant at 5% level. Contrarily, Inter-bank interest rate has insignificant negative impact on credit risk in Nepali commercial banks.