PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Cred­it Unions are not averse to be­ing reg­u­lat­ed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

De­spite on­ly 60 to 65 per cent of cred­it unions be­ing ful­ly com­pli­ant with fi­nan­cial sec­tor reg­u­la­tions, pres­i­dent of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T, Auldric Nep­tune said this was due to a lack of over­sight rather than de­fi­ance.

“Yes, we ad­mit that not all cred­it unions are com­pli­ant and there are a num­ber of rea­sons for that. Some of the is­sues have to do with re­sourc­ing. Some of the is­sues have to do with the time­ly pro­duc­tion of re­ports. Now, at the end of the day, in the con­text of the move­ment it­self, there are a lot of built-in safe­guards in the move­ment, in terms of we want to use it in self-reg­u­la­tions, where we ad­here to the PEARLS ra­tio,” Nep­tune told a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee which was an “In­quiry in­to the Su­per­vi­so­ry and Pru­den­tial Over­sight of Cred­it Unions in Trinidad and To­ba­go”

Nep­tune said, “In terms of the league’s au­dit and re­quest of in­for­ma­tion from the cred­it unions, which al­ready pro­vid­ed, we have not seen any­thing in the doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to us that sug­gests that there are any fun­da­men­tal flaws or weak­ness in the move­ment.”

How­ev­er MP Rishad Seecha­ran and for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul raised ques­tioned about the con­tin­ued la­bel­ing of cred­it unions as a move­ment, when they com­mand­ed bil­lions of dol­lars of in­vest­ments.

Dhan­paul point­ed to the lack of pro­tec­tion for tax­pay­ers fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the Hin­du Cred­it Union (HCU), as he asked about the League’s stance with re­gard to falling un­der a reg­u­la­to­ry body like the Cen­tral Bank or Min­istry of Fi­nance.

In re­sponse, Nep­tune said, “Well, let me re­move that per­cep­tion. There’s no fear by the League of be­ing reg­u­lat­ed. We have no is­sue with reg­u­la­tions. As we have said, we have in­vit­ed reg­u­la­tions, and we are not say­ing that the Min­istry of Fi­nance can­not reg­u­late the league.”

Nep­tune said he could en­cour­age cred­it unions to ob­tain in­sur­ance to avoid any pos­si­ble cri­sis on the lev­el of the HCU.

“If we are speak­ing about the fail­ure of Hin­du Cred­it Union and the loss of funds, we have ac­cept­ed, and we have said, we have ab­solute­ly no ob­jec­tions to de­posit in­sur­ance cov­er­age for cred­it unions. That would mit­i­gate against, quote, un­quote, in the event of fail­ure, the tax­pay­er bear­ing the bur­den of re­pay­ing mem­bers. We have no is­sue with that, as it is some­thing that can be im­ple­ment­ed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly in the con­text of the di­rec­tion,” said Nep­tune.