Deadline nearing for debt moratorium, Finance

Deputy Finance Minister Tanusak Lekuthai yesterday reminded borrowers that the moratorium offer would come to an end on August 20.
The programme allows borrowers whose outstanding debt is not more than Bt500,000 to suspend principal and interest payments for three years between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2015.
Tanusak said that as of Monday, 2.24 million borrowers with combined loans of Bt259.36 billion had applied for the privileges from the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, Government Savings Bank, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank of Thailand and Islamic Bank of Thailand.
These represented 70.6 per cent of the eligible borrowers, he said. Among them, 86.63 per cent chose to suspend principal repayment and asked for a 3-percentage-point interest-rate cut; their combined loans were Bt227.75 billion. The remaining 13.37 per cent asked for the rate cut alone; their combined debt was Bt31.61 billion.
Deputy Finance Minister Viroon Tejapaibul said some borrowers were worried that they would be put on a blacklist by the National Credit Bureau and so were reluctant to join the scheme. But he said they would not face such a problem because they would be counted as good debtors who had only suspended their debt payments in line with the government measures.
The government just wants to support low-income people and boost the economy, he said.
Surapol Opastien, president of the National Credit Bureau, backed Viroon on this. He gave assurance that banks would not count these debts as non-performing loans. The bureau will record only that these debtors had taken advantage of the government debt-moratorium scheme. That is not a blacklist and banks will consider other factors such as their ability to pay when they make new loans to these people, he said.