PETALING JAYA: B40 borrowers who received Bantuan Sara Hidup (BSH) or Bantuan Prihatin Rakyat (BPR) loans will get a helping hand with their repayments under Budget 2021.
They will be given two options: a moratorium on their instalments for three months, or a reduction of their monthly repayment by 50% for six months, said Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz (pic).
The Finance Minister said that this will also be extended to micro enterprises that have loans of up to RM150,000.
“Eligible borrowers will only need to contact their banks to choose the options and complete the documentation, ” Zafrul said during the tabling of Budget 2021 in Parliament on Friday (Nov 6).
For M40 borrowers, he said the application process for the repayment assistance will be simplified, with borrowers only needing to make a self-declaration of the reduction in their income in order to secure the repayment assistance.
“The facility for the B40 and M40 will commence in December 2020, ” he said.
The government had approved blanket loan repayment moratoriums from April to September, with Zafrul saying that Malaysia was the first country in the world to do something like this.
In October, this was changed to a Targeted Loan Repayment Assistance (TRA) where banks continued to offer extended moratoriums and other forms of repayment assistance.
Zafrul said that to date, more than 650,000 applications for repayment assistance have been received, with a high approval rate of 98%.
He added that banks have reported that 85% of borrowers have resumed loan repayments without seeking assistance since the end of the automatic moratorium period.
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