AMCON recovers N1trn debt —MD

Managing Director,  Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), Ahmed Lawal Kuru, has said that the corporation has recovered a debt of N1trillion since inception and has anchored a lot of businesses that are presently running. The MD said this during a visit by the leadership of the Business Recovery and Insolvency Practitioners Association of Nigeria BRIPAN to his office in Abuja. While stating that the corporation has resolved more than four to five thousand business relationships, Kuru also said that AMCON is not a hospital where when a business fail, you just walk in and AMCON takes over.

According to him, “AMCON is created to buy non performing loans, resuscitate the non performing loans even though some of these non performing loans have been with these banks for more than ten to fifteen years before being transferred to AMCON and it has been able to   resolved quite a lot of those transactions and in doing that it has recover a lot of funds. The Business Recovery and Insolvency Practitioners Association of Nigeria is a professional organisation recognised by law and a very important aspect of the financial framework. We are going to work with them particularly that they have capacity building abilities which are very important because what we do is related to business recovery.

The President, BRIPAN Ayodele Akintunde SAN said the idea is to partner with AMCON to develop the insolvency practice and business rescue mechanism available in Nigeria and to improve training of insolvency practitioners.  I would say AMCON has done a good job in trying to stabilise the banking system by trying to ensure that debts are taken care of. The debt recovery regime in Nigeria is still a work in progress such as law reform, training and necessary support to ensure that recovery of debt and sales of assets are easily achievable.