Unable to pay their credit debt, 1.5 million people on banks' blacklists

* Photo: Evrensel

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Minister of Treasury and Finance Lütfi Elvan has answered the Parliamentary question of main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Niğde MP Ömer Fethi Gürer regarding the bank customers who are unable to pay their personal loan debt in Turkey.

In his Parliamentary question addressed to Minister Elvan, CHP's Gürer previously asked, "How many people were added to blacklists by banks in our country in 2020 because they could not pay their loan debt? What is the distribution of this number by profession?"

Answering this question, Elvan has said, "According to the data obtained from the Credit Reference Agency, while the number of personal loan customers who were on the debt follow-up was 1,684,586 in December 2019, this number was 1,552,122 in December 2020."

Minister Lütfi Elvan has underlined that "in 2020, the number of personal loan customers on debt follow-up saw a decrease."

Referring to this last point, CHP MP Gürer has criticized that "the decrease of around 132 thousand people in the number of customers on debt follow-up in a year is seen as a positive development by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance while over 1.5 million people was added to the debt follow-up of banks because they could not pay their personal loan debt."

According to Niğde MP Ömer Fethi Gürer, this "shows how deficient the assessments about the problem in this process are."

Gürer has underlined, "It should not be ignored that the decrease in the number of customers on debt-follow up is related to the fact that the number of people using credit is decreasing every year."

The MP has noted that, "as of July 9-16, citizens' debt to banks and financing companies is 910.9 billion lira in total." While 19.5 billion lira debt is that of the ones who could not pay it back on time and were now on the debt follow-up, 737.1 billion lira is personal (including housing, automobile, consumer) loans and 173.9 billion lira stems from credit cards. (KÖ/SD)