The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) on Monday directed loan defaulters to immediately pay up their debts or it would publish their names in line with a directive by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
AMCON, in a statement issued in Abuja, warned the bad debtors that if loans remained unpaid, it will take steps to recover the debts including by legal means. The corporation also informed the recalcitrant debtors not to assume it will forgive their indebtedness.
The corporation further asked the bad debtors to present restructuring plans.
AMCON was set up in 2010 to absorb nonperforming loans in exchange for government bonds, after the central bank injected $4 billion to rescue nine lenders from collapse six years ago.
The central bank has since set an upper limit of 5 percent for non-performing loan ratio for the industry. Before the 2009 bailout non-performing loans ratio stood in double digits.
Many of the banks in the country including Stanbic IBTC, Diamond Bank, First Bank and Skye Bank have all given notices to bad debtors to pay up before the deadline of July 31, 2015.
During the current year, AMCON said it had recovered 57 percent of bad debts, estimated around N1.8 trillion from over 12,000 debtors of commercial lenders in the country.
The apex Bank in April this year directed lenders to give bad debtors three months to pay up their debts, otherwise they would be named in the media and barred from taking part in Nigerian currency and government debt markets.
It would be recalled that the CBN at a meeting with bank chiefs in Abuja authorised them to give their serial debtors till August 1 to pay up about N390 billion or get their names published.
CBN Director, Banking Supervision, Mrs Tokunbo Martins, disclosed that the total banking sector credit was about N13 trillion and about 3 per cent of that was non-performing.
According to her, August is the upper limit for the deadline but that banks were at liberty to publish the names of their debtors from June.
“Like I have explained before, we have a target. We have an upper limit of 5 per cent. You calculate 3 per cent of N13 trillion. August is the upper limit of the deadline. It is on or before August.”
