Over 9,000 Malaysians have been declared bankrupt in the first six months of the year, accumulating bad debts up to 12.4 billion ringgit (US$3.9 billion).
Insolvency department director-general Datuk Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil said the “new bankrupts” included individuals who defaulted on credit card payments or vehicle, housing, personal and business loans.
The debts incurred by 9,129 borrowers between January and June this year exceeded the 9.28 billion ringgit owed by 16,228 individuals during 2009, he said.
“About 40 per cent of the bankrupts had borrowed from one or more financial institutions,” he told Mingguan Mstar, The Star’s Bahasa Malaysia weekly.
Department statistics showed that between Jan 2005 and June this year, 81,908 persons had been declared bankrupt, with accumulated borrowings of 71.36 billion ringgit.
During the same period, only 281.99 million ringgit or 0.3 per cent of the total borrowings had been repaid, said Abdul Karim.
The bankrupts, he added, were categorised into the borrower, and social and corporate guarantors.
“Not all debtors have jobs or assets that enabled them to settle their loans,” he noted.
“Without any financial sources, how are they to repay the loans? This has made distribution of dividends to creditors difficult as well as delayed the process of them being discharged from bankruptcy,’’ he said.
Of the total number of bankrupts, 4.66 per cent were social guarantors while 5.32 per cent were corporate guarantors.
He said 11,223 of the 81,908 people declared bankrupts in the past five years had obtained court orders discharging them from bankruptcy while 9,523 discharge cases were approved by the director-general.
