Faced with the pan­dem­ic caused by the nov­el coro­n­avirus that has re­suk­t­ed in tens of thou­sands of deaths glob­al­ly, gov­ern­ments all over the world, in­clud­ing T&T, have cre­at­ed great eco­nom­ic hard­ships on their peo­ple as they try to flat­ten the curve and there­fore lim­it the spread of COVID-19; in the process sav­ing lives.

Sco­tia­bank is now of­fer­ing au­to­mat­ic de­fer­ral, for a pe­ri­od of up to six months, to all its clients who may have loans or cred­it cards pay­ments due to the bank.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank and its in­sur­ance com­pa­nies Tatil and Tatil Life gen­er­at­ed record rev­enue and net in­come last year, chair­man A. Nor­man Sab­ga has stat­ed.

Ger­ry Brooks has been ap­point­ed the chair­man of the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC). Brooks’ ap­point­ment took ef­fect on March 11 for a term of two years.

The Co­op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union Move­ment is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to fast track im­ple­men­ta­tion of a na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty plan im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the COVID-19 spread is con­tained.

RBC Roy­al Bank has an­nounced the in­tro­duc­tion of spe­cial month-end bank­ing times for se­niors and dif­fer­ent­ly-abled per­sons due to the on­go­ing nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) glob­al pan­dem­ic.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has wel­comed the ini­tial VAT re­funds by the Gov­ern­ment and the loan de­fer­ral sys­tem im­ple­ment­ed by the banks but it con­tends more needs to be done for Mi­cro, Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (MSMEs).

The Banker’s As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT) has an­nounced that there will soon be changes to the op­er­a­tions of some bank­ing in­sti­tu­tions.

Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed (RBL) has an­nounced that it will be low­er­ing the in­ter­est rates on loans and giv­ing par­ties the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­fer loan pay­ments.

The Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee (MPC) of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go has an­nounced a re­duc­tion in the Re­po rate as it tries to sup­port the econ­o­my hit by the free-fall of en­er­gy prices and the loss of pro­duc­tion ex­pect­ed as the im­pact of mea­sures to com­bat the COVID-19 is felt in T&T.

The Covid-19 out­break has had dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects on the world econ­o­my and if the virus’ im­pacts are in­ten­si­fied - it can mean neg­a­tive glob­al growth for the first quar­ter of 2020.

The Banker’s As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T is ask­ing cus­tomers to lim­it their vis­its to the bank as much as pos­si­ble.