Moratorium, the Focal Point of Media

The news break regarding the new stimulus plan, National People’s Well-Being and Economic Recovery Package (PEMULIH) has made the media to shift their gaze on loan moratorium once again.

The news exposure for the topic has surged due to the stimulus package’s announcement while previously, it has been less than stellar for the rest of the month.

Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin has announced that automatic blanket loan moratorium will be applicable to all borrowers, whereby for education loans such as PTPTN, it will be 3 months targeted moratorium and for JPA borrowers, six months postponement of repayment will be implemented.

Within the moratorium topic issues, it also appears that the media attention is glued on the moratorium after PEMULIH was announced with the automatic moratorium dominating the focus.

Apart from that, the media sentiment for the moratorium topic have been mostly neutral and positive during the package’s announcement.

However, two former finance ministers, Najib Razak and Lim Guan Eng, on the other hand, called for an interest free moratorium after the announcement.

Sharing the same view with Lim Guan Eng, Najib Razak further emphasized that banks will not be in the losing game if the moratorium is interest-free.