Sean Nero

State-owned First Cit­i­zens has lived up to in­vestor con­fi­dence and has grown to be­come a leader in this coun­try's fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try, said Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz. "I re­mem­ber when First Cit­i­zens was formed from the merg­er of three fail­ing in­sti­tu­tions. The merg­er it­self was a cal­cu­lat­ed risk, but it co­in­cid­ed with an ap­proved reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work to pro­tect the in­ter­est of cit­i­zens," he said.

Cadiz was speak­ing of the launch of First Cit­i­zens' 23rd branch lo­cat­ed at One Wood­brook Place, Woo­brook, on Ju­ly 6.

The bank's growth had not es­caped the at­ten­tion of the min­is­ter nor did the fact that the four ma­jor banks in this coun­try were all prof­itable. Cadiz said: "T&T has en­joyed a pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty over the past years, in spite of fluc­tu­a­tions in the glob­al econ­o­my. T&T is rapid­ly be­ing el­e­vat­ed to a fi­nan­cial cen­tre for the re­gion. Oth­er Caribbean gov­ern­ments are rais­ing funds in our mar­ket. Our peo­ple are al­so able to in­vest in oth­er is­lands. "Fi­nan­cial mar­kets around the world are rapid­ly in­te­grat­ing, a process that is dri­ven by ad­vances in in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, dereg­u­la­tion of fi­nan­cial mar­kets and the rise of in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors will­ing to in­vest in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. T&T is an at­trac­tive part­ner in this process. Over the years, in­vestor con­fi­dence has brought sub­stan­tial cap­i­tal in­flows."

He said records showed that T&Ts econ­o­my had strength­ened un­der the Peo­ple Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. He said this was pos­si­ble be­cause of the pro­gramme to im­prove the eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture, while be­ing able to cul­ti­vate busi­ness con­fi­dence to en­able cap­i­tal growth.