Banks urged to cut down on credit

THE CENTRAL BANK has instructed the island’s commercial banks drastically to reduce consumer loans to their clients and expand credit for investment purposes in order to help the economy.

“With a circular letter I sent to the banks dated September 9, I called on the banks to limit the extent of their loan and credit in general because the latest statistical evidence shows that there has been an exclusion of the goals we have set,” Central Bank Governor Afxentios Afxentiou said yesterday in a radio interview.

“… It is not a plea, it is an order,” he said.

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.