GTBank Suspends Interest Payment on Loans

• GTBank Suspends Interest Payment on Loans

In a bid to ease the burden of the global pandemic on small businesses, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc has announced a 90-day moratorium on repayment of Food Industry loan, Fashion Industry loan and Quickcredit for business.

The lender disclosed this on its official Facebook page @gtbank.

The statement reads: “As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and because small businesses have had to stay closed to stay safe, we’re giving a 90-day moratorium on repayment of the following loans:

-Food Industry Credit
-Fashion Industry Credit
-QuickCredit For Business.”

The virus has infected 288 people in Nigeria and more than 11,900 in Africa.

African finance ministers have said the continent needs at least $100 billion to protect 30 million jobs in key sectors while Goldman Sachs group put the financing hole at $75 billion and said could be way more considering the ongoing tax holiday by most African governments to ease the impact of COVID-19 on small businesses.

“Possibly the most severe impact of the crisis will be on already stretched fiscal balances,” Dylan Smith and Andrew Matheny, London-based economists at the bank, said in a research note this week. “Budget deficits would likely rise from an average of around 3.5% to high single digits, even before any loosening to soften the economic effects of the corona-crisis.”

On Thursday, the World Bank said African economy could shrink between 2.1 percent and 5.1 percent in 2020. While Nigeria’s finance minister has said Africa’s largest economy could contract by as much as 3.4 percent without a well-structured stimulus package.

Nigeria’s revenue generation dropped to a record-low with the fall in global demand for oil. Industrial experts put the decline in global oil demand at 35 million barrels per day, explaining why oil prices fell on Thursday despite OPEC plus announcing 10 million barrels per day production cut in May and June.

With revenue declining and capital flights rising, the Federal Government has resorted to loans to fund the 2020 budget, a move economists said could push the nation’s debt off the roof and hurt its future budget as cost of debt servicing would form the bulk of the nation’s budget going forward.