AKEL will continue to strongly resist government scheming on non-performing loans
Statement of Georgos Loucaides, AKEL C.C. Spokesperson
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 9th November 2015, Nicosia
Ever since March 2013, the percentage of non-performing loans (NPL’s) has more than doubled since then and continues to grow as a result of the decisions imposed by the DISY-Anastasiades government and their Troika friends and associates.
Despite the destruction of the Cyprus economy due to the robbery committed by the banks and in spite of the enormous human suffering and misery caused by the ongoing socialization of the losses of the banks, the Cyprus economy continues to swirl in the quagmire of the banking crisis, whose content now concerns the unprecedented and ever increasing number of NPL’s.
The Government, the Troika, Central Bank and the banks failed to offer solutions to the problem of the NPL’s, the extent of which they themselves are responsible for, despite the promises and pledges they have made from time to time. Worst of all though is that they insist on the same failed recipe of the further socialization of the losses of banks by imposing punishing austerity and the haircut of micro-borrowers and their guarantors.
AKEL will continue to resist strongly the scheming of the Government and the Troika. We will continue to insist that the solution to the problem does not lie in the continuation of inhumane austerity, but in the implementation of policies to boost growth that will restore, albeit gradually, the incomes of working people, households and SME’s and that will enable them to again be consistent with their debt obligations. We will insist on the position that banks must at last focus on big-borrowers, as well as on generous and fair restructuring plans for the small-borrowers. AKEL will persevere to the end in the protection of small-borrowers through legislation and in particular the exemption of loans of up to EUR 350,000 from the possibility of packaging and selling them off to private investment Funds acting as vultures.
