This is five years longer than envisaged by the original act.

The changes had been expected to be made for some time, as the need to change certain provisions of the act regulating the operation of BAMC had been pointed to already after the bad bank became operational at the end of 2013.

The act was adopted in December 2012 but it took BAMC almost a year before it became operational and over a year before it received first assets. For this reason BAMC management has been calling for an extension of its mandate.

The changes are part of the package that the government started discussing at the beginning of March, when it appointed new non-executive directors at BAMC and lowered the pay for the management.

According to the proposal, the operations of BAMC will be extended by five years to 31 December 2022. The purpose of the extension is to avoid selling assets under pressure and at any price, find adequate buyers and getting higher possible proceeds from the sale.

The changes also introduce the possibility of BAMC establishing on its own or together with other institutions a joint-stock company or a limited liability company onto which BAMC could transfer assets or stakes in companies which the bad bank is allowed to restructure.

As a response to criticism and doubts about independence of supervision in the single-tier management, the changes are to introduce a clearer separation of the supervisory and executive functions of directors within the management board.