Moves are afoot to amend the National Credit Act in a bid to provide more relief to millions of over-indebted South Africans‚ and curb widespread abuse by dodgy money lenders.

The Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry has adopted the Sub-Committee report on measures to address the country’s alarming over-indebted problem.

At the end of June this year‚ of the just over 24 million consumers who were credit active‚ 14.4 million of them were in good standing‚ while 9.67 million had impaired records due to skipped or late payments.

 In other words‚ about 40% of this country’s credit active consumers are not servicing their debt as they should.

The proposed amendments to the Act aim to:

-Provide for simpler and more rigorous enforcement of the Act and criminal prosecution of lenders who contravene it; *Provide an effective debt counselling framework for low-income workers; and;

- Cap debt relief to promote a change in both borrowing and spending habits‚ in a bid to balance debt “forgiveness” with financial responsibility.

“Whatever the committee does (regarding debt relief) cannot encourage reckless lending or irresponsible borrowing‚ said Portfolio Committee chairperson Joanmariae Fubbs.

“The intention of this draft legislation is to encourage a change of behaviour on the part of both lenders and borrowers.”

The Committee will now seek the permission of the National Assembly to introduce the National Credit Amendment Bill of 2016.