Labour Minister Jennifer Baptiste-Primus yesterday challenged credit unions to be more entrepreneurial in their operations.
She told them they could make strong contributions in the areas of poverty reduction, economic diversification and reducing youth crime.
Baptiste-Primus, who spoke at the launch of the Co-operative Credit Union League of T&T's 2016 calendar of event at the Radisson Hotel in Port-of-Spain, said the sector comprises 560,000 persons–38 per cent of the population–and controls more than $11.5 billion in assets
"The prevailing economic climate both locally and globally does not give us much choice. Credit union entrepreneurship refers to an approach of managing the credit union which sees greater innovation in the leadership's ability to managing the organisation," she said
The minister added: "We are in a period of transition and transformation. We want to see a strong sector which will engender continued confidence in the credit union's philosophy and impacting positively on members' lives. These developments will impact on credit union's operations and governance."
At yesterday's event, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was between the League and the Antigua-based Executive Corporate Holdings/SugaPay. SugaPay is a payment system powered by Global Processing Centre Ltd (GPC) which is designed to work as a broader financial eco-system and payment architecture for delivery and capture of payments.
League president Joseph Remy told the T&T Guardian the aim was to introduce mobile payment services and automated teller machines throughout the local credit union system. He said a pilot project would be completed in March and on the basis of its success the rest of the project would be unveiled.
"We will be able to monitor operations and have an idea of the challenges we may encounter and we will tweak it to meet expectations," he said.
He said credit union members would be able to use the SugaPay Card and gave the following example: "You are going on a trip through the Caribbean and you want to use your funds in the credit union as your source of funding for that travel, so you transfer a certain amount on your card or onto your travel account and through your mobile phone you can utilise that."
Remy said there were plans to install ATMs at credit unions.
"There are small credit unions who may not have the resources, so they will pool the resources so that the large credit unions will put the infrastructure in place. The MOU signed covers the mobile payments and the teller machines," he said.