GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, has bro­ken his si­lence on the fee in­creas­es im­ple­ment­ed by Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd (RBL), call­ing out what he de­scribed as “me­dia mis­chief” and “de­lib­er­ate ig­no­rance” re­gard­ing the bank’s pric­ing his­to­ry.

The con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed fol­low­ing RBL’s im­ple­men­ta­tion of a new fee struc­ture on May 1, 2026, which saw the cost of es­sen­tial ser­vices—such as fees for in­suf­fi­cient funds and com­mer­cial cheque books—spike by more than 70 per cent.

The move has ig­nit­ed a firestorm of crit­i­cism, with many ac­cus­ing the bank of pass­ing on the cost of the Gov­ern­ment’s new 0.25 per cent as­set levy di­rect­ly to con­sumers.

Tan­coo was quick to dis­miss claims that the 2026 bud­get mea­sure was the cat­a­lyst for the bank’s pric­ing ad­just­ments.

“ ...The me­dia mis­chief of ty­ing the fee hike to busi­ness levy is un­for­tu­nate and de­lib­er­ate­ly ig­nores the fact that the bank has in­creased fees sev­er­al times in the re­cent past. I ap­peal for re­spon­si­ble re­port­ing,” Tan­coo said in a What­sapp re­sponse sent to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Ear­li­er this week for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert sug­gest­ed the fee in­crease could be re­lat­ed to the gov­ern­ment’s in­tro­duc­tion of that tax.

Ad­dress­ing the Cor­po­ra­tion Sole’s over­sight role, Tan­coo con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment has al­ready moved to en­gage the bank’s lead­er­ship.

“What I can say is that the bank has been en­gaged by ap­pro­pri­ate au­thor­i­ty and will is­sue a state­ment like­ly to­mor­row (to­day),” Tan­coo said.

FTC can help

Mean­while, the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC) has sig­nalled a will­ing­ness to col­lab­o­rate with the Cen­tral Bank to ad­dress po­ten­tial com­pe­ti­tion gaps fol­low­ing the re­cent surge in com­mer­cial bank­ing fees.

T&T's Fair Trad­ing Act states the leg­is­la­tion "shall not ap­ply" in a num­ber of ar­eas, in­clud­ing for "banks and non-bank fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, which fall with­in the purview of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act."

The FTC's ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Be­van Nar­i­nesingh em­pha­sised that while the FTC does not di­rect­ly reg­u­late the bank­ing sec­tor, the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy high­lights a pos­si­ble need for leg­isla­tive re­form to pro­vide reg­u­la­tors with “greater teeth.”

“If it’s a com­pe­ti­tion is­sue, I would sug­gest that leg­is­la­tion be se­ri­ous­ly looked at to see if this is some­thing that the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion prop­er­ly cov­ers,” Nar­i­nesingh said as he ques­tioned whether the present frame­work al­lows the Cen­tral Bank to act ef­fec­tive­ly when banks raise fees “in the na­ture that was hap­pen­ing there with­out any over­sight.”

“Does the present bank­ing reg­u­la­tion leg­is­la­tion deal with an is­sue where banks could raise their fees in the na­ture that was hap­pen­ing there with­out any over­sight or any ac­tion be­ing tak­en?

“Does the bank­ing reg­u­la­to­ry leg­is­la­tion prop­er­ly cov­er the Cen­tral Bank deal­ing with this type of is­sue? So that’s what you have to know. Be­cause it falls on the Cen­tral Bank, but they might say that the leg­is­la­tion does not give them that au­thor­i­ty to reg­u­late just rais­ing fees,” Nar­i­nesingh fur­ther stat­ed.

Ad­dress­ing the Cen­tral Bank’s cur­rent re­liance on “moral sua­sion”—per­sua­sion with­out le­gal force—Nar­i­nesingh sug­gest­ed that the fi­nan­cial sec­tor re­quires a leg­isla­tive over­haul sim­i­lar to re­cent moves in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions as he drew a par­al­lel to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT), which moved to amend its own laws to bet­ter han­dle com­pe­ti­tion is­sues.

Nar­i­nesingh how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged that banks do have the right to ad­just pric­ing for le­git­i­mate rea­sons but he warned that the FTC is watch­ing for “op­por­tunis­tic” pric­ing.

“If it was done for com­mer­cial rea­sons as they have al­lud­ed to, I think that then it’s jus­ti­fi­able. Any time there’s a price rise and we have done no­tices to that ef­fect for in­stance, if there’s a rise in prices be­cause of the glob­al en­er­gy cri­sis now with the high price of oil and gas, we have tried to in­di­cate to en­ti­ties that they should not use these types of sit­u­a­tions to take ad­van­tage of con­sumers.

“So I guess we have to take them (Re­pub­lic Bank) at their word that it was com­mer­cial­ly jus­ti­fi­able. My hope is that any time there’s a price rise in terms of any ser­vices that are be­ing of­fered, that it is in ac­cor­dance with prop­er com­mer­cial jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for do­ing so,” Nar­i­nesingh added.

He ad­vised that while no for­mal com­plaints have reached the FTC yet, ag­griev­ed cit­i­zens could al­so utilise the Fi­nan­cial Om­buds­man or the Cen­tral Bank, as he added the FTC con­tin­ues to re­fer sec­tor-spe­cif­ic griev­ances to the rel­e­vant reg­u­la­tors to en­sure the in­ter­ests of con­sumers re­main para­mount.

In a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia last week, Karen Yip Chuck, group vice-pres­i­dent, Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd and vice-pres­i­dent, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, Karen Yip Chuck, said while cus­tomer con­cerns about the in­crease in the bank’s fees are valid, there has been a “com­plex and cost­ly en­vi­ron­ment” cre­at­ed by cyb­ser­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and reg­u­la­tions re­quired for an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing frame­works.

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai on Wednes­day had al­so clar­i­fied that while the reg­u­la­tor pos­sess­es a clear leg­isla­tive man­date to mon­i­tor the con­duct of fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, the cur­rent frame­work does not ex­tend to the di­rect “set­ting” of prices for spe­cif­ic bank ser­vices.

In­stead, he said the bank is util­is­ing its leg­isla­tive over­sight to en­gage in high-lev­el dis­cus­sions with com­mer­cial en­ti­ties, en­sur­ing that the “regime” of fees re­mains one that the pub­lic could rea­son­ably nav­i­gate.