By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) said on Monday it will publish the list of bank loan defaulters in line with the directives of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), a Reuters report said.
This is coming on the heels of Nigeria’s “bad bank” AMCON asking defaulters to immediately square their accounts or risk their names being published.
The CBN in April 2015 had directed Nigerian banks to give their debtors three (3) months to square their accounts or be named in the media and barred from taking part in Nigerian currency and government debt markets, the Reuters report said.
AMCON warned loan defaulters that if loans remained unpaid, it will take steps to recover the debts including by legal means; saying debtors should not assume that it will forgive their indebtedness.
The report quoted a statement from AMCON as directing debtors to present restructuring plans.
Nigeria’s asset management company was set up in 2010 to absorb non-performing loans in exchange for government bonds, after the CBN bailed out nine (9) banks with N620 billion ($4 billion) six (6) years ago.
According to the report, top Nigerian banks including Stanbic IBTC, Diamond Bank, First Bank and Skye Bank, have all given notices to bad debtors to pay up.
The report says AMCON in 2015 had recovered 57 percent of bad debts so far, estimated around N1.8 trillion from over 12,000 debtors of commercial banks in Nigeria.
