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The Bank of Thailand (BoT) has come out to say that its debt settlement fair to help the small debtors has received a good response and expects the program to help many of the debtors from the more than 50 finance firms operating in Thailand.
The BoT has come out to say that it has so far seen as many as 158,000 debtors register for helping them with their personal loans and/or credit card loans.
The BoT’s online debt fair is an open channel for negotiation mediate debt, between debtors who have problems with debt repayment and have not helped and creditors via online system.
Suwannee Jesadasak Senior Director Financial Institutions Policy and Supervision Department 2 BoT stated that as of October 14, 2022, there were 158,539 debt settlement requests out of a total of 62,595 debtors, an average of 2-3 items per person. She added that most of the debts are credit cards and personal loans.
This initiative has been a joint effort of both Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Thailand (BoT) to organize a debt settlement exhibition.
The online registration is to help debt relief requests for the vulnerable debtors whose income has not yet fully returned to pre-covid level and may be further affected by the higher cost of living.
Currently, 56 financial institutions have accepted to join, covering debt from loans, credit card, personal loan debt, car lease debts, car registration debt, nano finance debt including loans with asset management companies and all types of credit of specialized financial institutions.
The move by the BoT is divided into many phases and the 1st phase was online debt settlement. The debtor can register for debt settlement from now until November 30, 2022, through the website www.bot.or.th/debtfair.
The 2nd phase would be a roaming debt fair operated by state-owned Specialized Financial Institutions and Krung Thai Bank Plc (KTB) during the month of November 2022 – January 2023, where debtors can register in advance and wait for services in debt settlement to start in November 2022 onwards.
The debtors that can participating in the online debt solution fair are debtors facing debt repayment problems and income has not recovered from the impact of COVID-19 and has not received help before.
Apart from this debtor with debt repayment problems from the impact that income that has not returned to levels of the past because of the covid situation or increased cost of living, can register to the debts solution fair to get help.