The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

THE government’s mortgage programme has experienced some delays in bringing assistance to homeowners who a applied for relief, State Finance Minister Michael Halkitis said yesterday.

Speaking to the media at his office in the Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield Building, Mr Halkitis said a team is working to have the kinks ironed out quickly.

“We expect very shortly,” he said “to be able to establish persons and funds to bring people relief. The delay has been as you know with mortgages, legal documentation had to be prepared and had to be vetted so that all of the banks can be using the same documentation.”

Responding to claims that the programme does not make provisions to assist enough homeowners, the minister said: “We said when we launched the plan, there were about 4,000 in arrears and when we narrowed it down and eliminated things like vacant property, commercial property and property that was being rented, we got down to a number of about 1,000 owner occupied residences that were in

arrears.  

“Those were the numbers given to us by the clearing banks association because we had derived the plan by sitting down with them and the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance to derive the plan.”

Additionally the appeals panel is also in the process if reviewing at least 20 applicants who felt as though they should have qualified for assistance.

“The original part of the plan was the appeals tribunal for those who would have applied and not been approved at first.

“That has been formed and they have met with the Clearing Bank Association because there have been some individual members saying that none of their applicants have been approved.

“So again what we are doing is we are meeting with the clearing banks to just confirm that all of the assumptions underlying the numbers that we got from them are still true so that we can move forward.”

The minister was not able to give an updated number of applications yesterday, however according to the Tribune’s records, as of November 2012, 414 requests for assistance were received with around 139 of them fulfilling the requirements. Another 275 were still being processed.