JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Forex crisis: Republic cuts US credit card limits

by

1611 days ago
20210223
Republic Bank branch, Independence Square, Port-of-Spain.

Republic Bank branch, Independence Square, Port-of-Spain.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Ef­fec­tive March 23, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd will re­duce its US dol­lar spend­ing lim­it per billing cy­cle on all Re­pub­lic Bank cred­it cards.

The bank an­nounced the change will see a re­duc­tion in its cus­tomers spend­ing lim­it on cred­it cards from US$12,000 to US$10,000.

In a re­lease, the bank said it not­ed the im­pact the change may have on clients’ day-to-day op­er­a­tions, but said this was nec­es­sary to man­age its forex port­fo­lio.

The change will ap­ply to all trans­ac­tions con­duct­ed out­side of T&T and in­ter­na­tion­al on­line trans­ac­tions where the cho­sen billing cur­ren­cy is TTD.

These on­line trans­ac­tions will be in­clud­ed in the month­ly US$10,000 billing cy­cle, RBL said.

Lo­cal TTD trans­ac­tions con­duct­ed on­line or at mer­chants re­main un­af­fect­ed.

Clients should con­tact the Bank’s Cred­it Card Con­tact Cen­tre at 627-3348 or vis­it its web­site www.re­pub­lictt.com for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

The Cen­tral Bank had not­ed that the coun­try’s net for­eign re­serves were US$6.86 bil­lion at the end of Jan­u­ary.

Mean­while, lo­cal busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to com­plain that the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change to pay for im­port­ed goods has ap­proached cri­sis pro­por­tions.

A re­cent sur­vey con­duct­ed by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er key stake­hold­ers found that the lack of for­eign ex­change has been a daunt­ing chal­lenge.

Two hun­dred and four firms across nine busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sur­vey and the ma­jor­i­ty of firms, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 83 per cent (170 firms) were af­fect­ed by the in­abil­i­ty to source forex to pur­chase raw ma­te­r­i­al and some fin­ished prod­ucts from ex­ter­nal sources.

The sur­vey not­ed that this re­sult­ed in firms fac­ing dras­tic neg­a­tive im­pact on sales, in­abil­i­ty to main­tain sup­ply chains which re­sult­ed in de­lays in re­stock­ing and meet­ing or­ders, in­abil­i­ty to pro­cure es­sen­tial equip­ment and/or com­po­nents, more strin­gent cred­it terms and con­di­tions from sup­pli­ers, al­low­ing for in­crease cost and in­abil­i­ty to meet com­mit­ments to for­eign sup­pli­ers in a time­ly man­ner, im­pact­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty and lead­ing to ac­counts and goods/ser­vices be­ing placed on hold.

Alarm­ing­ly, the sur­vey al­so not­ed, 66 per cent of firms (135) re­ceived less than 50 per cent of their forex re­quire­ments from their lo­cal bankers in 2020.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored