Retired banker Richard Young has suggested that Finance Minister Colm Imbert to invite the Brics Bank to set up back office operations at the International Financial Centre (IFC) in T&T. He said the move could boost the country's revenue.
Speaking on a recent T&T Coalition of Services Industries (TTCSI) radio programme, Young said what Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics) established was an institution that focused on development.
"It was a kind of competitor to the World Bank and this thing created a lot of attention in the financial services sector. A lot of the western countries went in a queue to become members of the Brics Bank with the exception, of course, of the United States. So that causes people to reflect and say, look, is there an opportunity?
"The Brics Bank was in five countries. It is headquartered in Shanghai, but the president is going to be from India.They have kind of shared it (responsibilities). I don't know where Brazil is going to be now because they have their own (financial) challenges," he said. Young said the bank will have branches in different parts of the world, particularly in Latin America.
He added: "I understand that they feel more comfortable operating in an English speaking environment, particularly when it comes to legislation. So, to me, there is an opportunity to get the Brics Bank presence in Port-of-Spain to service the entire region, not just for the English speaking Caribbean.
"You know that China, in their way of growing, has decided that they want to be in all parts of the world and a lot of their state corporations are operating in all parts of the world. Together with that, they have their state financial institutions like the Export Bank and the China Development Bank.
Let's try to get these Chinese institutions having a presence for the region; here in Port-of-Spain, under our IFC (International Financial Centre) and the whole concept of clustering begin to happen."Young also spoke on the benefits of free higher education for citizens. He said more 6,000 ACCA students are studying ithrough the Government Assisted Tertiary Education Programme (GATE).
This, he said, would provide the vital human resource needed by local financial institutions.
"I think when you look at what has been put in the budget, minister Imbert talked about the IFC, but we could integrate all that with tourism, sport, maritime and get the whole services sector going. I think TTCSI really has a golden opportunity to capture all of that and really make it work, because the nice part about it is, its people and we could employ people," he said.