DAP urges PM to extend moratorium, ready to cooperate with all parties - Guan Eng

KUALA LUMPUR : DAP is prepared to work with all political parties to put pressure on the Prime Minister to extend the moratorium on bank loan repayment for another six months.

Its secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng, in a media statement today, claimed that the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government had failed to extend the payment moratorium to 6.6 million borrowers.

"The PN government has disappointed many Malaysians by failing to extend the moratorium on automatic bank loan repayments for another six months when he (Prime Minister) announced an additional RM10 billion in Kita Prihatin financial assistance last month.

"The Kita Prihatin package amounting to RM305 billion is expected to contribute 3.7 per cent to 4 per cent to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth this year," he said.

However, he claimed, the value of GDP is unlikely to be achieved due to the latest COVID-19 infection situation in the country.

"For this reason, the extension of the automatic bank loan moratorium for six months to March 31, 2021, is needed to cope with the slowdown in economic growth.

"Tan Sri Muhyiddin claimed that the extension of the bank loan and bank assistance moratorium targeted after September 30 had helped more than 1.4 million borrowers.

"However, the number of borrowers is still much lower than the eight million individual and corporate borrowers who benefited from the previous moratorium," he said.

Guan Eng claimed that the additional cost of the automatic loan moratorium was only RM6.4 billion compared to the profits recorded by the banking industry of RM32 billion in 2019.

"If the banking industry does not want to shoulder the corporate social responsibility, the government should shoulder it," he said.