As of March 31, 2021, only 80 applications remain in financial institutions in Cyprus, submitted under the state Estia program.
At the same time, in early March, the government transferred the first payment in the amount of 23,117 euros to the program participants.
According to the representative of the Ministry of Labor Marios Savvides, who deals with Estia issues, there were 6389 applications for participation in the program (€ 1.9 billion in total) by the end of last month, and 3,773 of them were fully completed, in 1894 cases the applicants lacked certain certificates, 564 applications were attributed to special cases and 78 were immediately rejected.
In addition, Savvides said that by 31 March the Ministry of Labor had sent a total of 3,600 letters to the applicants. Of these: 540 turned out to be with a positive decision, 1771 were with a refusal to participate in the program, 871 applications related to financially unstable borrowers were redirected for further consideration and 198 are still in the process of being approved for participation in the program.
It should be noted that the main reasons for refusal to participate in the program are non-compliance with the income criteria of applicants, as well as the criteria for a credit line that apply to borrowers with non-performing loans as of September 30, 2017.
Finally, Savvides noted that a total of 649 applications for inclusion in Estia will be forwarded to the Ministry of Finance for further consideration as they relate to unsustainable borrowers eligible for the Plan, and 96 applications are for loans that were restructured prior to the implementation of Estia. Also, 167 statements in which errors were found were sent back to banks for corrections.
As you may know, the Estia program started in Cyprus in September 2019, the deadline for submission of documents was set at 15 November.
Due to weak interest from borrowers, the deadline for applications was extended until the end of 2019. On December 27, 3 thousand people submitted applications instead of the expected 10-15 thousand. The program was extended again until July 31, and then until the end of 2020.
As expected, credit institutions should consider the remaining applications in the near future and submit them to the Ministry of Labor, which decides on state subsidies for non-performing loans.
The goal of the program is to help, support and protect those citizens who took out loans secured by their only home. Also, according to the idea, Estia should help the banking system and reduce the amount of non-performing loans.