The number of notifications registered under the Law on debt to equity swap reached to 7,000 at the end of February, representing total loans amounting to 2 billion lei, stated Wednesday Liviu Voinea, Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Romania (BNR), quoted by Agerpres.
„Updated statistics on the number of notifications on the debt to equity swap show that there are 7,000 notifications at the end of February 2017, of which 99% come from individuals. The trend has been downwards since July. There are 6,000 debtors. In practice, 755 people have sent notifications for more than one loan,” said Deputy Governor Voinea at the conference organized by the European Commission Representation in Romania at the launch of the „2017 Economic Report for Romania”.
According to him, the total amount of the loans related to the notifications is 2 billion lei and 67% of them appear in the balance sheets of the banks at the time of notification.
„93% of them are in foreign currency, 40% even in Swiss francs. Two thirds of these loans are nonperforming and fully provisioned at the time of issuing the notification. 76% of them were granted between 2007-2008. For more than 90% of them, the amount remained to be paid exceeds the value of collaterals to date,” the BNR official mentioned.
The Law on debt to equity swap has been adopted in the first half of last year and entered into force on 13 May 2016. It provided that any consumer, individual who has a mortgage secured loan of less than the equivalent of EUR 250,000 at the time the loan was agreed, for a building used as home, may choose to hand over the house to the bank in exchange for waiving the remaining balance payment, by a notification sent to the credit institution to this effect.
