Rose­marie Sant

Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber Li­aquat Ali wants the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to stand up against com­mer­cial banks, whom he is ac­cus­ing of un­fair treat­ment to­wards the busi­ness sec­tor, and to "seek al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Speak­ing at the Cham­ber's Christ­mas Din­ner on Wednes­day, Ali com­pared the op­er­a­tions of com­mer­cial banks to the Olympics.

"They go­ing for gold but the gold is not the gold medal, the gold is who go­ing to make the most mon­ey, which com­mer­cial bank is go­ing to high­light the most prof­it and is like a brag­ging right for these banks now," he said.

Ali told guests at the func­tion, in­clud­ing the man­ag­er of RBC's Cou­va op­er­a­tions, that he had noth­ing against any busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tion which is prof­itable, "but we have a prob­lem when we find we be­ing treat­ed un­fair­ly by the com­mer­cial banks."

He said non bank­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions of­fered a range of ser­vices and he called on them to "sell them­selves to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty be­cause we can no longer sit by and al­low the com­mer­cial banks to take ad­van­tage of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, when it is the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty who have the com­mer­cial banks there."

Ali said banks take ad­van­tage of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in a num­ber of ways: "We have now the banks charg­ing you for every de­posit you make. For every $1,000 you de­posit they tak­ing a charge for that. That is not fair.

"We have cred­it card charges that the com­mer­cial banks are charg­ing you that you un­aware of. You have $1,000 on your card you pay $900 but they charg­ing you in­ter­est on the $1000. We have to look at these things and we have to send a mes­sage to the banks."

Ali said of­fi­cials of the Cou­va, Ch­agua­nas and Siparia cham­bers had met with bank­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives "and out­lined all the prob­lems", in­clud­ing ab­sence of wash­room fa­cil­i­ties at bank branch­es.

He was crit­i­cal of what he de­scribed as an "un­fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change" where busi­ness­men take loans in US dol­lars, with­draw the mon­ey from an over­draft fa­cil­i­ty and leave it as se­cu­ri­ty, "so you pay­ing ad­di­tion­al charges on your over­draft."

"You pay­ing in­ter­est on your US dol­lar loan and you have to pay them back in US dol­lars, and if for some rea­son you take it for one year and the Trinidad dol­lar slides against the US dol­lar, you los­ing, so what that telling us?" he asked.

Ali said while he had pre­vi­ous­ly been op­posed to float­ing the TT cur­ren­cy he be­lieves that the time is right to "al­low it to float and that is when we will know where we stand in­ter­na­tion­al­ly against our com­pet.

BANKERS RE­SPOND

The Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT) said it had al­ready reached out to the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber fol­low­ing com­ments made by pres­i­dent Richie Sookhai and is will­ing to meet with the Cou­va Pt Lisas Cham­ber to dis­cuss the con­cerns raised.

"It is our hope that these meet­ings will al­low the cham­bers and BATT to dis­cuss any con­cerns not­ed and to clar­i­fy any in­for­ma­tion re­quired."

BATT said the bank­ing sec­tor is one of the most reg­u­lat­ed in­dus­tries in the coun­try and is re­quired by the Cen­tral Bank to pub­lish a full and com­pre­hen­sive list of ser­vices pro­vid­ed and re­lat­ed charges.

"Charges vary based on ser­vice type, chan­nel and prod­uct," the as­so­ci­a­tion said, adding that "com­par­isons made in the pub­lic do­main need to en­sure that the cor­rect da­ta is utilised for pub­lic dis­cord."

BATT said cheap­er op­tions for bank­ing trans­ac­tions, such as such as dig­i­tal and non-branch op­tions, on­line and ATMs "are more con­ve­nient, safe and time ef­fec­tive."

On the is­sue of lend­ing and de­posit prod­ucts BATT said: "The da­ta will show that the over­all mar­gin be­tween loans and de­posit rates are at some of the low­est points ex­pe­ri­enced in a num­ber of years."

BATT said the out­look for lend­ing and de­posit rates will "ul­ti­mate­ly be in­flu­enced by over­all eco­nom­ic and mar­ket con­di­tions both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, linked to pre­vail­ing fis­cal and mon­e­tary pol­i­cy."