Chester Sam­bra­no

One Op­po­si­tion mem­ber is ac­cus­ing the banks of be­ing un­kind to the cit­i­zen­ry dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Tabaquite MP Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing his con­tri­bu­tion on a pri­vate mo­tion in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

He said Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert and the Cen­tral Bank had been pre­vail­ing on the lo­cal banks to as­sist peo­ple with their loans but peo­ple are now dis­cov­er­ing “it’s not a de­fer­ral that doesn’t have a cost” and they will still have to pay in­ter­est.

“I make bold to say that banks have not been very kind to the peo­ple dur­ing this time of COVID,” Ram­bachan said.

Ram­bachan said small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es are plan­ning to scale down op­er­a­tions and “job loss­es are on the rise whether we agree or not.”

The for­mer Works and In­fra­struc­ture min­is­ter said there is no con­crete plan be­ing re­vealed to give help to these “vul­ner­a­ble” busi­ness­es who have been strug­gling to sur­vive due to the COVID-19 lock­down mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed, not­ing the Gov­ern­ment should give con­sid­er­a­tion to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ pro­pos­als for an eco­nom­ic mas­ter plan.

Phase two of the COVID-19 re­open­ing plan start­ed this week with the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try, laun­dries and tyre shops be­ing al­lowed to restart. In the first phase, the food sec­tor was al­lowed to re­sume.

Ram­bachan said banks should be will­ing “to give up 25 per cent of their prof­its in the form of in­ter­est rates re­duc­tions and de­fer­ral with­out penal­ties” to help busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens strug­gling to make ends meet dur­ing the pan­dem­ic

He ad­mit­ted that the banks can­not be forced to do that but in­di­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment holds se­ri­ous in­vest­ments in Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, First Cit­i­zens, the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

Be­fore he could con­tin­ue, how­ev­er, he was in­formed by the House Speak­er that his speak­ing time had elapsed.