The government of Maldives has announced a moratorium of loan repayments for customers of Bank of Maldives.

This was announced via a press statement on Wednesday, following President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s address to the nation regarding latest updates of the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) situation in the country.

As such, the announcement comes as part of the government’s Economic Recovery Plan to minimize the impact on individuals and businesses due to the outbreak, which is already striking the country’s economic growth, hard.

The moratorium is for all customers with personal, housing or business loans and details have been finalized the bank.

It allows a freeze on monthly principle and interest repayments for a period of six months and the tenor of the loan will be extended for this period, this will allow more time to repay the accumulated interest and principal repayments.

Following this, the repayment amount is to be reduced by 20% for another six months.

Customers with aforementioned loans are eligible for this moratorium from 1 March until the end of September 2020, reads the statement.

The only criterion set for customers is for them to have cleared all overdue loan payments, which may be done throughout the given period between March and September.

Further, credit cards and overdraft facilities for personal and business customers are not eligible for the moratorium and once requested for it, customers will not be required to make any payments for the six-month period.

The outstanding loan amount will include interest rates for the six-month duration which will be spread over the remaining period of the loan.

As interest rate charged will not be changed, the bank revealed that if customers are able to continue to meet their loan repayments regularly according to the existing schedule, they may wish go for the moratorium.

Individual details will be shared with customers over the course of the next week and BML is set to announce a simple online process for personal customers.