PUTRAJAYA, Jan 29 — The 303,415 bankruptcy cases handled by the Insolvency Department throughout the country as of December last year are seen as a big loss to the nation, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Liew Vui Keong.

He said this number could affect the productivity and revenue of the country in the long term.

"The department should handle them more efficiently,” he said in a statement issued here today following his working visit to Ipoh, Perak yesterday to look at the need to improve infrastructural facilities at the Legal Aid Department, the Malaysian Insolvency Department and the Ipoh High Court.

Liew said among the measures that could be taken were updating existing data and meeting the debtors to find out their problems and guiding them on how to settle their debts.

On debtors who have died but the Insolvency Department was not notified of their deaths, Liew said their family members should inform the department so that the data could be updated.

He said previously, this resulted in confusion as the family members were said to have to bear the burden of paying the debt, including confiscation of the deceased’s property.

He urged the family members to provide the latest information to the Insolvency Department.

In the same statement, Insolvency director-general Datuk Anas Ahmad Zakie said the number of bankruptcy cases handled by the department from 2014 until 2018 was 95,105 cases.

He said among the main causes of bankruptcy were personal loans (27.76 per cent), hire purchase of vehicles (24.73 per cent), housing loans (14.09 per cent) and credit cards (9.91 per cent).

The five states with the highest number of bankruptcy cases during the same period were Johor (13,346 cases), Selangor (24,648), Kuala Lumpur (11,774), Penang (6,832) and Perak (5,809), he said. — Bernama