3 A. The central bank — the Nepal Rastra Bank (est. 1956)

The institution (Nepal's): the NRB — established 1956 (succeeding the Sadar Muluki Khajanchi Khana's monetary functions), governed by the Nepal Rastra Bank Act 2058 (2002); the sole note-issue authority; the government's banker; the banking system's regulator and supervisor (jointly with the cooperative authorities for SACCOs) under the Bank and Financial Institutions Act (BAFIA) 2063 (2006); monetary policy's author (twice-yearly statement). The functions (theclassic list — with Nepal's application):1. Note issue — the monopoly of currency (the sovereign's signature on every note);2. Banker to the government — accounts, loans (ways and means), debt issuance agent (treasury bills and development bonds' auctions);3. Bankers' bank — banks' reserve accounts, the clearing house, and the lender of last resort (the panic-killer role — Bagehot's rule: lend freely at a penalty rate against good collateral);4. Custodian of foreign exchange reserves (Nepal's reserves: months of import cover — the buffer metric; the rupee's peg to the Indian rupee at the long-standing fixed rate: the peg importing Indian monetary conditions and making the NRB's balance sheet a defence of that rate — the system's defining constraint, Unit 5.3's analysis);5. Monetary policy and credit management — the policy-rate, reserve-requirement and open-market toolkit (Unit 5.3.1's full treatment);6. Regulation and supervision — licensing, prudential norms (capital adequacy, CRR/SLR), inspection, problem-bank resolution — financial stability's guardian;7. Development mandates (Nepal's historical extra:…