Yvonne Webb

Pres­i­dent of the Cen­tral Fi­nance Fa­cil­i­ty (CFF), Esme Raphael, has wel­comed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an's as­sur­ance to en­sure the con­tin­ued safe­ty and sound­ness of cred­it unions, in light of the bil­lion-dol­lar Cli­co/CL Fi­nan­cial de­ba­cle.

The CFF, lo­cat­ed in Ch­agua­nas, is reg­u­lat­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er for Co-op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment in the Min­istry of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment. It pro­vides its ser­vices on­ly to cred­it unions. The CFF, on be­half of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union Move­ment, held two meet­ings with the Min­istry of Fi­nance on how cred­it union in­vest­ments in Cli­co should best be man­aged.

The CFF was al­so seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion about Gov­ern­ment's pro­posed bailout of the trou­bled in­sur­ance gi­ant and its im­pact on its de­pos­i­tors, while pro­vid­ing al­ter­na­tives to this ap­proach. In his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion last week, Dook­er­an out­lined a plan to pay a max­i­mum of $75,000 to all de­pos­i­tors ini­tial­ly and com­plete pay­ments over a 20-year pe­ri­od with ze­ro in­ter­est.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate on Mon­day, as he pre­sent­ed the 2010/2011 $49 bil­lion fis­cal pack­age for de­bate, Dook­er­an said he was pre­pared to speak with stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing, cred­it unions, trade union­ists and se­nior cit­i­zens whose in­vest­ments in Cli­co were un­cer­tain. Raphael said while the cred­it union move­ment was un­der no threat of col­lapse, the 20-year re­pay­ment plan would make it less com­pet­i­tive in de­liv­er­ing cred­it union ser­vices.