Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) on Thursday paid Rs 1 billion to Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), its sole oil supplier, leading the latter to announce that it would immediately resume normal supplies.

Even though NOC officials said they expected to receive normal supplies from Friday, it would at least take four more days for supplies in Kathmandu to become regular owing to different reasons including the general strike that has been called today.

NOC had made the payment from loans which the government approved last week as per the decision of the Council of Ministers. With the payment, the amount NOC has to settle with IOC has come down to Rs 4.95 billion. India has been putting restrictions on the supply of petro products to Nepal from the past one month citing non-payment of past dues, resulting in many petrol stations in the country going dry and causing great inconvenience to consumers.

As per the agreement between NOC and IOC, NOC needs to pay Rs 240 million every month to clear past dues, and settle monthly import bills in four installments. The Rs 1 billion amount just paid to IOC covers two months installments of Rs 480 million and the remaining is said to finance the import bill of May.