Some borrowers from microfinance banks have decried their exemption from loan tenor extension in the banking industry, which some commercial banks introduced for their borrowers to soften the effect of the lockdown occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic.
Some of the borrowers, who spoke to The Punch complained that the MfBs had been mounting pressure on them to repay their loans immediately, despite the lockdown which lasted in some parts of the country for weeks.
A borrower, Mr Kayode Ajala, said, “My microfinance bank has been harassing me to repay my loan. They come to my house and shout on me but there was lockdown for weeks and I could not open my shop to sell anything.
“When I told them that the commercial banks were giving loan tenor extension after the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced measures to lighten the challenges of coronavirus on the economy, they asked if it was CBN that was funding them?”
Another borrower, Ranti Ekundayo, said, “The microfinance banks are not even considering our plight or customer relations. They just want us to pay by force now irrespective of the hardship, even when we had not been operating because of the lockdown.”
When our correspondent contacted some of the microfinance banks, they denied harassing the customers to repay their loans.
During the last Monetary Policy Committee meeting, the CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, said to mitigate the effect of the COVID-19 on the economy, the bank took decisive action to safeguard the Nigerian financial system and the economy from the emerging headwinds.
He said, “The key policies include provision of extended moratorium on loans by an additional one year beginning from March 2020.”
The Chief Executive Officer, Sterling Bank Plc, Mr Abubakar Suleiman, said the bank understood that a lot of businesses had to shut down their operations to curb the spread of the virus, and that it made provision for the extension of the repayment of loan obligations that were due.
The Chief Executive Officer, Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria, Lamin Manjang, stated that part of the measures by the bank to ease financial pressure on its clients was “a three-month payment holiday on personal loans and retail mortgages including business mortgages.”
A source in CBN however said that, “The moral suasion that the CBN governor gave to the industry was not only to the commercial banks but also to all the lending institutions including the MfBs.
“Even, landlords in Abuja are giving their tenants one month or more extension to pay their rent because of COVID-19 hardship,” he said.
— Punch