Kathmandu. The government has decided to provide concessional loans and interest subsidies for the purchase of vehicles for the government employees.

For this, the government has prepared the Vehicle Management Directive-2083 for the government employees. The draft of the directive prepared by the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers has been sent to the Ministry of Finance on July 3 for opinion and consensus.

According to the directive, employees will get concessional loan and interest subsidy for the purchase of two or four wheelers.

As per the directive, the chief secretary, secretary and employees of the twelfth level will have to provide a maximum of Rs 6 million for four-wheelers, Rs 5 million for joint-secretary or eleventh levels, Rs 4 million for under-secretary or ninth-tenth level, Rs 400,000 for section officer and two-wheelers for sixth to eighth level and Rs 200,000 for non-gazetted and assistant level two-wheelers.

The directive proposes to provide 100 percent interest subsidy on loans. Employees will have to pay 20 percent of the cost of the vehicle themselves and the government will bear the interest on the rest of the loan within the prescribed limit.

The directive also proposes to provide monthly fuel expenses and annual maintenance and operation assistance to the employees with vehicle facilities. The annual fuel allowance ranges from Rs 25,000 to Rs 140,000 and maintenance and operation assistance ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 100,000 depending on the category of employees.

For effective management of government vehicles, there is an arrangement to keep the details of all the vehicles in the digital system, install GPS and operate the vehicles in the office through a pooled system as per the need.

The directive states that the purchase of electric vehicles assembled in the country will be encouraged. It will coordinate with the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) to expand the charging infrastructure in the offices.