Write off unpaid agricultural loans

Abdu Khal
Okaz newspaper

It is not a secret that many Saudi citizens live under the burden of long-term debt, which nearly spoils their lives since they spend at least one-third of their salaries paying off debt. The entire salary will disappear if they have to bear rent expenses.

There are several kinds of debts, various reasons for accumulating them and different durations for their repayment. However, most people are indebted because of the high amounts of loans they took for buying land or building houses. Some people were caught in the debt trap after taking out loans to invest in the stock market.

I wrote many times after the stock market crash calling on the responsible agencies to reschedule such debts. Yet, nothing has been done and people continue managing their affairs under severe stress.

Some of these people could not live under such conditions and tried to find solutions to their problems own their own.

One such citizen in Taif decided to write a letter, saying: “I borrowed an amount from the Agricultural Bank to plant my farm and hoped to pay back the debt from the proceeds, but the drought prevented me from completing the cultivation. I ended up paying back the loan from my salary that used to support my family and pay the rent and the car installment. I sent a request for exemption. The request was forwarded to the Financial Department, which investigated my case and found that my land did not have access to water. The Financial Department sent the case to the Ministry of Finance and after more than a year the case was closed because my wife had a commercial registration in her name. I resubmitted my request again and again, and each time it was rejected for the same reason.”

The question is what is the relationship between the woman and her husband’s debt? If a woman was rich should she be held responsible for paying back her husband’s debt?

We know that there is financial independency between spouses, so neither should be responsible for paying the other’s debt. I do not know why the Ministry of Finance closed the case since its reason was not logical.