Kathmandu, June 8 -- Nearly 1,500 startup entrepreneurs have received around Rs1.88 billion in subsidised loans from the government over the past three fiscal years, including the current one. However, entrepreneurs say the programme has yielded little visible impact, with a large majority of startups failing within a year of operation.

The subsidised loan scheme for young entrepreneurs was introduced in 2018 by the KP Sharma Oli administration to promote self-employment and entrepreneurship. However, the programme came into operation only five years later due to procedural delays. In recent years, startup founders have often had to wait for months, and sometimes more than a year, to receive the loans.

This year, too, political changes ...