Legislative measures are in the offing to curb reckless lending which continues unabated, Department of Trade and Industry officials said in Parliament on Tuesday. The measures include extending the powers of the National Credit Regulator (NCR) to conduct proactive investigations and impose administrative fines on perpetrators as well as empowering Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies to provide debt relief mechanisms through regulations. Parliament’s trade and industry committee has approved the proposal to enhance the powers of the NCR. Democratic Alliance spokesman on trade and industry Geordin Hill Lewis said the party fully supported the proposals which arose out of a court case involving Capitec in which the court ruled that the NCR needed a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing to investigate a matter. However, the law did not give the NCR the power to conduct proactive investigations and there was no clarity as to what constituted reasonable suspicion. The committee has given...
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