CYPRUS: “Little chance” of MPs to pass insolvency bill by March 19

House Finance Committee Chairman and opposition DIKO party leader Nicolas Papadopoulos said that there is “little chance” that parliament would vote on the final bills on insolvencies by March 19, when the present suspension of laws on foreclosures ends.

The Committee, in a joint session with the House Interior Committee, started reviewing the fifth and final pieces of legislation on Wednesday, part of the much-delayed framework that has held up the next tranches of bailout funds from the Troika of international lenders.
The bills are necessary to help banks recover assets or other securities from the non-performing loans that account for about 50% of the national banking system’s loanbook, caused by relentless lending by bankers and the collapse of developers when property prices came crashing down.
During Wednesday’s first read of the bills, that relate to the insolvency of natural persons and regulates the restructuring of loans by borrowers and their guarantors, as well as the process for auctions, the opposition parties of communist AKEL, socialist EDEK and the single-seat Greens, said they would not approve the bills as they were.
DIKO had indicated that the last revision to the bills, approved by the Cabinet last week, could win the support of its eight MPs, which combined with the ruling DISY’s 20, could barely pass the framework through the plenary session of the 56-seat House.
Senior bankers, most of whom were hired after the economic crisis since the decision for a Troika bailout in March 2013, and who have been tasked with rescuing their banks, have reiterated that they are not after the primary homes of small-time borrowers, but need the legal framework to chase big-time corporate borrowers and developers who refuse to service their loans.