PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Bank of Guyana has stat­ed it has not been in­formed about the sale of Sco­tia­bank’s op­er­a­tions in Guyana to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s First Cit­i­zens Bank Lim­it­ed.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the bank said, “The Bank of Guyana (BOG) notes that FCB en­tered the said agree­ment with­out in­form­ing the BOG.”

The bank al­so point­ed out in the re­lease that First Cit­i­zens’ Bank does not cur­rent­ly have a li­cence to op­er­ate in Guyana.

“FCB has not sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion, in keep­ing with the re­quire­ments of the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act 1995 (FIA), to the BOG to ac­quire con­trol of a bank (BNS) op­er­at­ing in Guyana.”

The an­nounce­ment of the sale of Sco­tia­bank’s op­er­a­tions in Guyana was made by the Bank of No­va Sco­tia via a press re­lease post­ed on­line.

In that re­lease, Sco­tia­bank said, “the agree­ment is sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval and cus­tom­ary clos­ing con­di­tions.”

Guyana’s Se­nior Min­is­ter with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Fi­nance Ash­ni Singh re­spond­ed to the an­nounce­ment mo­ments af­ter it broke, stat­ing it was pre­ma­ture and re­quired the ap­proval of the Bank of Guyana.

The Bank of Guyana had pre­vi­ous­ly blocked the sale of Sco­tia­bank to Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd in Sep­tem­ber 2019, cit­ing con­cerns that it would lead to a mo­nop­oly in the mar­ket.