Benarnews.org - Malaysia will grant a six-month delay on most loan payments to ease economic suffering caused by the coronavirus outbreak, the Central Bank said Tuesday, as officials in neighboring countries took aggressive measures to mitigate the pandemic’s expected financial impact.
In Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said the government was preparing assistance packages to help cushion the negative effect of COVID-19.
“The automatic moratorium is applicable to loans and financing which are not in arrears exceeding 90 days,” Malaysia’s central bank, Bank Negara, said in a letter to bank CEOs and heads of the country’s financial institutions.
The delay in repayment does not apply to credit card balances, the bank said. The new measures, to take effect from April 1, would assist borrowers experiencing financial constraints, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), it said.
“Banking institutions should provide individuals and SME borrowers with adequate information on how the suspended loan … will be treated during the moratorium period,” Bank Negara said.
More than 18,200 people have died and at least 407,000 others have been infected worldwide, according to the latest data compiled by disease experts at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.
With 106 new cases and one more death reported Tuesday, for a total of 1,624 infections and 15 deaths, Malaysia remained the country with the third-highest caseload in Asia, behind China and South Korea.
Health ministry officials said almost 1,000 of Malaysia’s total cases were connected to a gathering at a mosque near Kuala Lumpur last month. About 16,000 people from more than two dozen countries joined the four-day event organized by the India-headquartered Tablighi Jamaat missionary movement.
At least eight of Malaysia’s coronavirus fatalities were linked to the religious gathering, health ministry officials said.
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Topic: Malaysia will grant a six-month delay on most loan payments (Read 427 times)