Patrick Njoroge0:00
We know that the health crisis, I mean the financial crisis, we need to stop it before it happens, in a sense anticipate. It's true we don't know the size of the impact of the economic crisis or the economic impact, but from our perspective, we need to take, we should say, some measures to reduce the adverse effect that may be coming. So on this, I want to mention a few that we would like to, we will, we have agreed on and we want to institute from today. The first one, of course, is to be clear that we will take all measures to continue the services, continuity of services. This, for instance, relates to the various protocols, emergency protocols that the various institutions have. And secondly, even very simple things about the way we are handling cash. We can assure you that, just to make sure, as an abundance of caution, to make sure that we don't have the virus being transmitted via cash, cash that will be coming out of banks will be quarantined for at least one week. So that is more than enough time for the virus to become inactive. So we are quite clear about that. Secondly, Your Excellency, we have taken some measures that we announced two days ago with regard to enhancing the mobile money transactions. This includes, for instance, the elimination of charges on all transactions below 1,000 Kenya shillings. And as you know, a lot of our people make those transactions, and this is something that I think would be very useful also in the long run. We've also expanded some of the limits, for instance on the transactions. So the limit on a single transaction used to be 70,000 Kenya shillings; we've expanded that to 150,000. The daily limits have also been pushed up to 300,000. And also we used to have a monthly limit of 1 million, which we've eliminated. Other things including charges, Your Excellency, charges on transfers from banks to the mobile wallet and vice versa, all those have been eliminated. So it means that the wallet, I can treat my wallet like my bank account and my bank account like my wallet. And so there's a seamless transfer with cash, and it is as cash. So there is less and less need for the actual cash for all the transactions. I mean, for instance, Your Excellency, think of the people that use public transportation today. And now maybe they worry about the cost of making that payment of 500 shillings or 100 shillings to the matatu. Now you can do it seamlessly. And I think that's really where we're going. So those are some of the measures; we announced them two days ago. And I think what we are here for now, Excellency, is to also tell you about the measures that we have agreed and we are implementing with the banks, with the commercial banks. And this is meant again to, in a sense, cushion the impact on some of the most vulnerable in our society. So we are beginning, Your Excellency. So one of the things we have agreed on is that the banks will seek to provide relief to borrowers on their personal loans based on the individual circumstances arising from the pandemic. As you can imagine, about 28% of our loans are actually personal loans, and a lot of our people have borrowed as personal loans and they are using it for something. And also you have those instances where they will probably lose their job or they'll be put on furlough or something like that. So in a sense, they may not have the cash flow to support a loan that they were actually servicing before. So all loans that were current on my...
