LICENSED moneylenders are welcoming a recent Government decision to lift several long-standing restrictions on the industry, including caps on interest rates and bans on advertising.

The changes, passed in Parliament on Tuesday, will offer more legitimacy to a sector that has been stagnating for years, according to those in the field.

'Since time immemorial, us legal moneylenders have been put in a bad light,' said Mr Peter Tan, who has run shop in the Golden Mile Complex for 20 years.

'(The changes) go to show that we are doing a legalised business where we don't have to hide under a cloak of darkness.'

For the last six decades, moneylenders licensed by the State have faced several restrictions designed to prevent them from taking advantage of desperate borrowers.

Those included caps on interest rates that ranged between 12 and 18 per cent, limits on advertising and an outright ban on franchising.

But those restrictions were lifted on Tuesday by MPs, who said the move would help combat the mushrooming loan-sharking trade by making borrowers aware of legal sources of money.

'People with no or low income will, at certain points in time, need cash quickly to meet an urgent or genuine need,' said Senior Minister of State (Law and Home Affairs) Ho Peng Kee.

Read the full story in Thursday's edition of The Straits Times.