Desperate woman offers Equity Bank Sh5,000 daily to stop auction
A borrower has offered to wire Kes 5,000 daily to Equity Bank to settle a Sh1.8 million loan after her business fell on tough times.
Ms Hannah Njeri claims that the bank advanced her a total of Kes53 million out of which she has paid Kes51.2 million, leaving a balance of Kes1.8 million.
Ms Njeri said she has been servicing the last loan facility granted to her to support her business which involved importing goods from China to sell in Kenya.
She said that the business was adversely affected in 2018 when the government allowed Chinese traders to enter Kenya after which she faced cutthroat competition forcing her to close shop.
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She then went into water purification business where she invested heavily in machinery and equipment but before the business could take off, the government slapped excise duty and Value Added Tax on bottled water, making it very hard for her business to break even.
Although she attempted to sell one of her properties to salvage her business and pay off the loan, she was not successful and has fallen on tough times owing to economic fallout triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“In her deposition she states that she has restructured her business and as a result she is able to raise at least Kes5,000 daily to pay the defendant bank until the economy… improves,” Judge David Majanja said.
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Equity Bank said she was required to repay the facility by monthly instalments of Kes 399,864 which she had defaulted in January 2019.
The lender demonstrated that it had duly served her enough notices to pay up and that the business was not affected by the Covid-19 pandemic to warrant restructuring under the recently concluded Central Bank of Kenya moratorium.
The court agreed with Equity Bank and said compelling the lender to accept her payment plan would amount to restructuring the facilities granted to her by the bank by restraining it from exercising its legal remedies as this would amount to re-writing the parties’ bargain.
