Number of heavy debtors decreasing in 2007?

According the Financial Services Agency, the number of over-indebtedness borrowers has decreased in 2007 fiscal year, compared with 2006 fiscal year. It was revealed in the meeting of the Financial Panel Tackling wiht Over-indebtedness.

In the report, heavily-idebted people is defined as individuals who borrow money from 5 money lenders or over. In 2006 fiscal year, number of heavy debeors in 2007 fiscal year was about 1,177,000 whereas it was 1,701,000 in 2006 fiscal year.  The figure was based on the personal information registered in some industrial institutions collecting debtors’ financial information.

The FSA underlined that law reform such as the Law of Reglulating Monery Lenders was effective measure to tackling with over-indebtedness as well as setting up consultation system for heavy debtors.  

Lawful money lenders tend to become reluctant to lend money to heavy debtors; therefore heavily indebted people might be likely to borrow money from loan sharks. However, data of debtors borrowing from illegal money lenders are not collected by the legitimate debtor’s information centres. By above law reform. Provably, number of heavily indebted borrowers might be larger than the statistics figure compiled by the government.