Housing Minister to raise bank fee concerns with Finance Minister

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee says he will have a dis­cus­sion with the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to see what can be done for Re­pub­lic Bank to hold off on in­creas­ing fees.

His com­ment came af­ter RBL’s lat­est round of fee in­creas­es drew con­cern from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Moth­er’s Day Pop Up Shop at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, yes­ter­day, Lee said the in­creas­es could place ad­di­tion­al strain on vul­ner­a­ble groups.

“Well, as a busi­ness­man, any bank­ing fees be­ing in­creased, whether it is Re­pub­lic Bank or any oth­er bank at this time, it re­al­ly can add an ex­tra fi­nan­cial strain, es­pe­cial­ly on the poor­er sec­tor, the work­ing class sec­tor of our so­ci­ety. Be­cause just keep­ing mon­ey in a bank is cost­ing peo­ple. So, even just main­tain­ing a bank ac­count, you have to have a cer­tain amount so that there’s a charge, a fee at­tached to it.”

He al­so raised con­cerns about how banks now gen­er­ate rev­enue.

“I came from the Cen­tral Bank. I first start­ed with my ca­reer in the Cen­tral Bank…tra­di­tion­al banks used to re­ly on the spread be­tween loans and the in­ter­est they charge on fixed de­posits, and so forth. Now, the largest source of rev­enue is bank fees. And that is some­thing that I have a con­cern about as an in­di­vid­ual. And I will be ask­ing, I will li­aise with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and see how best we can come up with some sort of so­lu­tion to as­sist or to hold on to these bank­ing fees,” he said.

CEO of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Dr Ramesh Ramdeen, warned that SMEs are par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­posed.

“We un­der­stand, we live in a dy­nam­ic world. Prices are go­ing up across the board. But when the banks de­clare that kind of sig­nif­i­cant prof­it, and at the same time in­creas­ing bank­ing fees for the small­er SMEs es­pe­cial­ly, they’re im­pact­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­cause they’re the ones who have cash flow prob­lems.

They’re the ones who have to go to the bank to get loans to see them through on a month-to-month ba­sis, some­times short-term, pri­or to cov­er their ex­pens­es. So it is a chal­lenge for them. Hope­ful­ly, those in au­thor­i­ty will have con­ver­sa­tions, and good sense will pre­vail,” Ramdeen added.

Ven­dors at the Pop Up Shop said the in­creas­es could have a rip­ple ef­fect on small busi­ness­es and con­sumers.

Nicole Per­ry, chief bar­gain­er at That Sew U, said, “Peo­ple would be im­pact­ed be­cause busi­ness­es at some point in time will pass on the cost to con­sumers.”

Sinead McIn­tosh, co-own­er of Ice Jew­ellery TT, added, “It was sud­den, SMEs were not ex­pect­ing it. We in­tend to roll with the punch­es and try not to af­fect our con­sumers at this time.”

Dene­icere Leela, own­er of Bliss Can­dle Com­pa­ny, said, “We just have to cope and make more rev­enue to off­set the fees.”