Govt looks at cutting duration of credit blacklist

The Finance Ministry is considering a move to reduce the length of time bad debtors remain on the National Credit Bureau (NCB)’s blacklist, currently 8 years in total, to help them access new loans from legal lenders sooner.

Deputy PM and Finance Minister Pichai Chunhavajira said on Wednesday that the current duration of five years on the NCB blacklist, plus an additional three years of record-keeping, is too long.

He said the ministry is reviewing legal provisions to see if this period can be shortened to 1-2 years plus 3 years of record-keeping.

“The move would allow more people to settle their debts and leave NPL (non-performing loan) status sooner, and thus able to apply for new loans from legal institutes and reduce the reliance on illegal lenders,” he said.

Earlier this month, Pichai promised to speed up the disbursement of 10 billion baht from the fiscal budget to clear non-performing loans of around 1 million debtors of government banks.

He said most of these 1 million debtors owed around 10,000 baht per head on average to the state bank, adding that the move is part of the government policy to clear these small debtors from the NCB blacklist.

The debtors would be required to repay the loan amount to the government within two or three years, Pichai added.