Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Re­pub­lic Bank econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon has said that al­though East­ern Cred­it Union (ECU) is no longer un­der the re­mit of the Cen­tral Bank, it is im­por­tant that the Com­mis­sion­er of Co-op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment con­tin­ues to car­ry out its su­per­vi­so­ry role over that cred­it union.

“The Com­mis­sion­er of Co­op­er­a­tives which is now where they now fall un­der, has to be much stronger and much more on top of the is­sues as far as cred­it unions are con­cerned. This or­gan­i­sa­tion is like the Cen­tral Bank it­self but it’s just for cred­it unions. It has to keep on mon­i­tor­ing how all cred­it unions op­er­ate. The is­sues at East­ern Cred­it Union are not new,” he told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view.

East­ern Cred­it Union was an of­fi­cial Li­censee of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T to op­er­ate a Bu­reau de Change.

“The ECU was un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Cen­tral Bank be­cause of that for­eign ex­change busi­ness which they op­er­at­ed. The fact that they’re no longer do­ing for­eign ex­change busi­ness puts them back square­ly un­der the Com­mis­sion­er of Co­op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment,” Ramkissoon added.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank’s web­site, a Bu­reau de Change is an es­tab­lish­ment ded­i­cat­ed on­ly to the ex­change of cur­ren­cy.

Bu­reaux de Change are li­censed by the Cen­tral Bank to buy and sell for­eign ex­change notes, coins and trav­ellers’ cheques in ex­change for notes and coins of an­oth­er cur­ren­cy.

The Busi­ness Guardian re­port­ed that East­ern Cred­it Union has of­fi­cial­ly dis­con­tin­ued its Bu­reau de Change op­er­a­tions, there­by re­mov­ing the cred­it union from un­der the re­mit of the Cen­tral Bank.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that ECU jus­ti­fied this busi­ness de­ci­sion by say­ing that this ser­vice has been a part of East­ern’s land­scape for many years but it has not pro­duced the ex­pect­ed re­turns.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence held last Tues­day, ECU man­age­ment ac­cused the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Co­op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment of col­lud­ing with a dis­grun­tled for­mer board mem­ber to de­stroy the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The Com­mis­sion­er of Co-op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment is cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing East­ern Cred­it Union and its CEO and one of its di­rec­tors were dis­missed and two oth­ers were sus­pend­ed with­in the past year.

Ramkissoon said that for many years there has been the de­bate about how the cred­it unions should be su­per­vised as some ar­gue that they are not com­mer­cial banks and the rules gov­ern­ing them should be dif­fer­ent.

How­ev­er, he said giv­en the past is­sues with the Cli­co and the Hin­du Cred­it Union, the na­tion should be vig­i­lant.

“Let us not wait un­til we have the fail­ure of a cred­it union be­fore we could have prop­er rules and reg­u­la­tions in place. The fi­nan­cial sys­tem such as banks, cred­it unions, in­sur­ance com­pa­nies play a spe­cial role in any econ­o­my. There are new is­sues aris­ing for the com­mer­cial bank­ing sec­tor. The fi­nan­cial sys­tem can­not have in­com­pe­tent peo­ple nor poor gov­er­nance sys­tems.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to pres­i­dent of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League, Joseph Re­my for a com­ment on the mat­ter but he said he was out of the coun­try.