Finance minister hopeful of foreclosure solution

FINANCE Minister Harris Georgiades said on Saturday he was hopeful of a final settlement regarding the foreclosures law, saying that April 2 should be the date for a new beginning.
On Thursday, the parliament plenum unanimously suspended a law on foreclosures of mortgaged property until April 2.
The foreclosures legislation is a crucial requirement of the island’s €10 billion bailout.
Five bills make up the insolvency legal framework, aimed at providing a safety net to vulnerable borrowers. That was the fourth suspension of the law, which has meant Cyprus` consolidation programme has been frozen since last September.
Invited to comment on MPs’ allegations that the delay in passing the insolvency framework is due to the continuous revision on the relevant bills by the government, Georgiades said he did not wish to get into that debate.
“I want to maintain a positive perspective that this issue will be regulated in a positive way in the next few weeks and I don’t wish to take part in a public blame game around this sensitive issue,” he said.
Asked whether April 2 could be considered a date for a new start, Georgiades replied that he hoped so.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.