Payment holidays offered by credit providers during the three-month Covid-19 lockdown, from April to June, will cost an additional R20.7 billion for the estimated 1.6 million South African consumers who took advantage of them.
This is according to Benay Sager, the chief operating officer of debt counselling firm DebtBusters.
Sager says although payment holidays were good news for people facing a short-term cash crunch, they came at a cost. 
This is as a result of interest accumulating on the debt owed, even though payments were put on hold for a while.
DebtBusters’ analysis was conducted based on the profiles of typical consumers who applied for debt counselling over the past year.