Not enough takers for NBL CEO post

Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) still hasn't been able to find a chief executive officer for Nepal Bank Limited (NBL), which has been under the central bank's control for the last seven years. This is the fourth time the hiring process has stalled because enough candidates haven't applied for the post. "Only two persons applied for the post by the deadline, which was last week," said a high-level official at NRB. The source didn't want to divulge the names of those who applied because the sealed tender for the position have not been opened yet.

The same problem that's come up this time around--the lack of qualified applicants--had scuttled NRB's earlier attempts to find a qualified candidate too. During its third attempt, the bank had been able to round up three candidates, but the selection process couldn't proceed further because one of the candidates former ambassador appointee to the U.S. Sukh Dev Shah had applied for the post without following due procedures. According to the World Bank's guidelines managing the NBL is a service included in the WB funded Financial Sector Technical Assistance Project at least three competitive applicants must apply for the post for the final hiring to be deemed valid. For the project, the WB and the UK's Department for International Development have provided a total of US $ 26 million.

"We have informed the WB about the outcome of the latest tender," said the NRB official. "And we may have to select a candidate from the two applicants we have if NRB allows us to do so." Earlier, NRB Governor Bijaya Nath Bhattarai had said publicly that the central bank would appoint the CEO for NBL very soon because without a CEO it would be inappropriate to run the bank even to maintain a check and balance on the financial system. "NRB is a regulator and its role is to strengthen the overall banking system, not to run any particular bank," he had told journalists recently.

It's not as if NRB hasn't tried to resolve the matter. After every tender it floated failed to draw in applicants, it had even lowered the level of qualifications an applicant would need to have; and yet, top professionals gave the job a pass. So what's the hitch? Ratna Raj Bajracharya, CEO of Nepal Credit and Commerce Bank, said that many possible candidates might have shied away because they thought that NBL's CEO wouldn't be given enough independence (the government has a majority share in the bank).

Bajracharya, who was a member of the earlier management team at NBL, said that candidates need not harbour such worries. He said that unionism, wouldn't be big problem that an NBL CEO would have to deal with. Although NBL, the country's second largest bank, has lowered its non-performing loans to 5.91 percent, it has a net negative worth of around Rs. 5.59 billion. Maybe that's the disincentive. And until more suitable candidates start applying for the CEO post, NRB officials, who are heading the bank now, may have to continue to do so.

Source: Kantipur