Nepal’s economy saw a negative growth of 1.99 percent in the last fiscal year, ending mid-July, largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to new national accounts statistics unveiled on Thursday.

Earlier in April last year, the country’s economic growth rate was revised to 2.27 percent.

In the first quarter of this fiscal year, the economic growth rate is also negative by 4.6 percent but it is "recovering at a V shape," said Hem Raj Regmi, deputy director general of the Central Bureau of Statistics during a programme organised to make public the new national accounts statistics.

This year the economic growth has been based on a rebasing of the economic indicators, which has been done on an interval of every 10 years.

The country's gross domestic product, based on the revised estimate, stands at Rs3.94 trillion, said the Central Bureau of Statistics.