Public banks restructured 4.4 billion liras of debt in one month.

Halkbank, VakıfBank, and Ziraat Bankası have restructured the debts of 32,599 individuals amounting to 4 billion 433 million 966 thousand liras over the course of approximately one month.

The Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) announced on September 26 that, as part of the coordinated macroprudential steps taken with the aim of ensuring financial stability in collaboration with the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (TCMB), individuals struggling to pay their credit card and personal loan debts have been offered the opportunity to restructure their debts for up to 60 months.

According to the application, the TCMB has limited the maximum interest rate to be used in the restructuring of individual credit cards to the reference interest rate of 3.11%, while personal loans can be restructured for up to 60 months without additional credit if the principal and interest payments are delayed for more than 30 days.

LIMIT CANNOT BE INCREASED UNTIL AT LEAST HALF OF THE DEBT IS PAID

As part of the application, the debtor must apply for restructuring within one year, and the monthly installment amount will be added to the minimum payment amount for that month, and the credit card limit at the relevant bank cannot be increased until at least half of the restructured credit card debt is paid. The TCMB differentiated the maximum contractual interest rates applied to individual credit cards based on the reference rate according to the credit card period debt. Looking at the rates that came into effect on November 1, the maximum contractual interest rate for those with a period debt of less than 25,000 liras in Turkish lira credit card transactions is 3.5%, and the maximum late payment interest rate is 3.8%. For those with a period debt between 25,000 and 150,000 liras, these rates will be 4.25% and 4.55%, respectively, and for those above 150,000 liras, they will be 4.75% and 5.05%. Additionally, for those with a period debt exceeding 150,000 liras, the same rates will apply to corporate credit cards regardless of the debt amount.

RESTRUCTURED DEBT AMOUNT EXCEEDS 4.4 BILLION

According to information obtained from Halkbank, VakıfBank, and Ziraat Bankası, as of October 28, the number of individuals whose debts have been restructured, including both credit cards and personal loans, reached 32,599. The total amount of restructured debt has reached 4 billion 433 million 966 thousand liras, and it has been noted that there has been significant interest from individuals wishing to restructure their debts with public banks during this process.