A mere few weeks ago, the hypothesis that the COVID-19 virus would not affect the African continent was still being widely propagated. The theory that the virus does not survive in warm weather has since been debunked and the number of African countries that have recorded confirmed cases of coronavirus is growing rapidly. On 18 March 2020, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that Africa has to prepare for the worst.
1. General aspects
The primary legislation governing insolvency and restructuring proceedings is Law 85/2014 on preventing insolvency and insolvency proceedings1 (the ”Insolvency Law”).
The Insolvency Law has been amended on October 2, 2018 by Government Emergency Ordinance no. 88/2018 for amending and supplementing regulations on insolvency2 (the ”G.E.O. no. 88/2018”).
The re-introduction of Crown preference and the resulting change in the order of priority of creditors on insolvency was announced as part of the Autumn budget in 2018, way before anyone had heard of coronavirus or COVID-19, and was originally due to come into force on 6 April 2020. It was delayed until 1 December 2020 in terms of the 2020 budget which was presented to Parliament on 11 March 2020, the same day as the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic.
Background
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a “pandemic” on March 11, 2020.
The Covid-19 pandemic is having an overwhelming impact on global order. These are testing times for nations. For India and for most other countries, the outbreak presents twin challenges, not only containing the virus spread, but also limiting the economic impact in an already slowing economy.