Finance Minister expects foreclosures vote on April 2

Finance Minister Harris Georgiades said he expects the much-delayed package of bills regulating foreclosures and insolvencies will be debated and hopefully passed by parliament next Thursday, April 2.

The House of Representatives had suspended, once again, a law on foreclosures of mortgaged property, a crucial requirement of the island’s 10 bln bailout, to allow time for the debate and approval of the five bills comprising the insolvency framework, believed to provide a safety net to vulnerable borrowers.

That was the fourth suspension of the law, due to which the economic adjustment programme with the Troika of international lenders has been frozen since last September and payments to the state coffers delayed.

Commenting on allegations by MPs that the delay in passing the insolvency framework is due to the continuous revision on the relevant bills by the government, Gerogiades said he didn’t wish to get into that debate, but that the revisions in the texts were due to changes requested by the MPs, that have been mostly met.

“We need a reliable legal and regulatory framework that will facilitate the smooth functioning of the financial system and money circulation in the banking system,” he said. He added that the banking system should be able to attract new deposits based on trust, to lend to businesses and reliable households and that there should also be repayment of loans and expressed hope that the necessary relevant legal arrangements will be made very soon.

He noted at the same time that the recapitalisation and restructuring of the banks during the last two years allows them to begin providing financing to the productive sectors of the economy.