GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Cen­tral Bank has is­sued a for­mal en­dorse­ment of the de­ci­sion by Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd (RBL) to pause its fee in­creas­es.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the reg­u­la­tor wel­comed the bank’s of­fi­cial re­sponse, sig­nalling a col­lab­o­ra­tive res­o­lu­tion to the is­sues that had re­cent­ly cap­tured na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

The Cen­tral Bank clar­i­fied that its own in­ter­ven­tion in the mat­ter was min­i­mal, as­sert­ing that its in­volve­ment re­mained con­sis­tent with its man­date to work along­side the bank­ing sec­tor rather than through heavy-hand­ed over­sight.

Ac­cord­ing to the reg­u­la­tor, the pri­ma­ry im­pe­tus for the res­o­lu­tion came from with­in Re­pub­lic Bank it­self, stat­ing the chair­man and board of di­rec­tors ini­ti­at­ed a re­view of the pub­lic’s griev­ances and de­ter­mined that im­me­di­ate ac­tion was nec­es­sary to main­tain in­sti­tu­tion­al and sec­toral sta­bil­i­ty.

“The Cen­tral Bank com­mends Re­pub­lic Bank for re­spond­ing so proac­tive­ly to the con­cerns ex­pressed by the pub­lic and, in par­tic­u­lar, the chair­man of the board for his very sen­si­tive and pos­i­tive han­dling of the mat­ter,” the re­lease said.

In a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment yes­ter­day, RBL stat­ed it was paus­ing its in­crease in fees, which was in­tro­duced on May 1, as the coun­try’s largest com­mer­cial bank stat­ed that it has been lis­ten­ing close­ly to the con­ver­sa­tions and feed­back re­gard­ing the high­er charges.

RBL said it would share the new im­ple­men­ta­tion dates with the pub­lic soon.

The bank al­so clar­i­fied that the $1.30 charge for with­draw­al would ap­ply on­ly to in-branch teller trans­ac­tions and that there would be no fee in­creas­es at ATMs, on­line or mo­bile trans­ac­tions or pay­ing with the bank’s deb­it card.

The bank added the fees gen­er­al­ly ap­plies to ser­vices on old­er sys­tems which are ex­pen­sive to main­tain.

This tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of charges has drawn im­me­di­ate re­ac­tions from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, with sev­er­al cham­bers ex­press­ing a sense of re­lief for their mem­bers.

Ang­ie Jairam, chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), wel­comed the de­ci­sion, not­ing that the pause is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing both busi­ness­es and pri­vate cit­i­zens.

“At this dif­fi­cult stage of the econ­o­my, the CR­BC wel­comes this de­ci­sion. While we un­der­stand that there will al­ways be op­er­a­tional costs at­tached to bank­ing ser­vices, busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens alike will ap­pre­ci­ate both the pause and the re­lief it brings,” she said.

Jairam added that many busi­ness­es could now breathe a sigh of re­lief and con­tin­ue fo­cussing on sur­vival, seek sta­bil­i­ty, growth and re­cov­ery while main­tain­ing strong work­ing re­la­tion­ships with their bankers dur­ing these chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic times.

“We ap­pre­ci­ate the con­sid­er­a­tion shown to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the wider pub­lic, and we look for­ward to con­tin­ued con­struc­tive en­gage­ment on is­sues af­fect­ing con­sumers and the na­tion­al econ­o­my,” she added.

The im­por­tance of this re­prieve was fur­ther sup­port­ed by Ki­ran Singh, pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, who high­light­ed that many busi­ness­es are cur­rent­ly strug­gling with ris­ing op­er­a­tional costs across mul­ti­ple sec­tors.

“We know that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is lan­guish­ing with a lot of in­creas­es across the board in many oth­er ser­vices that they have to pay for. We al­so know that re­cent­ly, the re­ports in­di­cate that the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor got in­volved in the dis­cus­sion over this fee in­crease so that it was re­al­ly im­pact­ing neg­a­tive­ly up­on the en­tire psy­che of the coun­try,” he said.

Singh not­ed that in­di­vid­u­als out­side of the busi­ness cir­cle would have al­so com­ment­ed that the pro­posed in­creas­es would have af­fect­ed their pock­ets deeply.

“So we cer­tain­ly wel­come this news com­ing out of Re­pub­lic Bank and we’ll look for­ward to work­ing with them in how we mon­i­tor these changes to the ex­pens­es that they that are cre­at­ed by the pro­duc­tion of the ser­vices for the gen­er­al pub­lic and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“Of no­table men­tion is al­so the fact that sev­er­al oth­er large bank­ing in­sti­tu­tions in this coun­try have in­di­cat­ed pub­licly that they will not be in­creas­ing any of their fees any­time soon. And maybe this is al­so some­thing that Re­pub­lic Bank was look­ing at in terms of how they nav­i­gate the com­pet­i­tive na­ture of the bank­ing in­dus­try, pro­vid­ing ser­vices to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the wider pub­lic,” Singh said.