PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Teporter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day that this coun­try’s push to be­come a cash­less so­ci­ety will place a great fo­cus on fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion.

“One of this Gov­ern­ment’s ma­jor fo­cus­es is em­pow­er­ing every cit­i­zen to par­tic­i­pate mean­ing­ful­ly in the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go. To achieve this, we be­lieve that every­one should have eq­ui­table ac­cess to the for­mal fi­nan­cial sec­tor re­gard­less of their cir­cum­stances or back­ground,” said Min­is­ter Im­bert at the Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Strat­e­gy Stake­hold­er Con­sul­ta­tion Work­shop at the of­fice of Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre at Tow­er D.

The work­shop is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC) and the EU-UNCDF-OACP Part­ner­ship for Dig­i­tal Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion.

Im­bert, who is al­so act­ing as the Prime Min­is­ter, said, “In our view, fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion is es­sen­tial to long-term eco­nom­ic growth, pover­ty re­duc­tion and so­cial ad­vance­ment. It is more than sim­ply hav­ing a bank ac­count. Apart from em­pow­er­ing our cit­i­zens who are left out of the for­mal fi­nan­cial sec­tor, it en­cour­ages en­tre­pre­neur­ship in un­der­served groups, such as res­i­dents of rur­al ar­eas, women and small and mi­cro busi­ness­es.”

He added, “The Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Strat­e­gy is thus in­tend­ed to pro­vide the frame­work to em­pow­er cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly the un­banked, with the tools and re­sources they need to be fi­nan­cial­ly re­silient. It is more than a plan on pa­per; in­stead, it is an ac­tive pro­gramme to en­sure that fi­nan­cial ser­vices are read­i­ly avail­able to every­one, rea­son­ably priced, and cus­tomised to meet the dif­fer­ent re­quire­ments of var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Min­is­ter not­ed that ac­cord­ing to a sur­vey done by TTIFC this year, on­ly 76 per cent of T&T’s adults owned a for­mal fi­nan­cial ac­count with a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­ion, which is less than the 81 per cent as re­port­ed over in 2017 through the World Bank Find­ex Re­port.

He said, “There­fore, we have wit­nessed a widen­ing in the fi­nan­cial ex­clu­sion gap, or a re­duc­tion in fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion, over the last five years. There is lit­tle doubt that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic would have been par­tial­ly re­spon­si­ble for this, as the vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tion suf­fered dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly from in­fec­tions, loss of em­ploy­ment and in­come and fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties.”

Im­bert ac­knowl­edged that cash was still very much the pre­ferred pay­ment op­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go as al­most two thirds of the pop­u­la­tion (63 per cent) used cash, with cheques and oth­er over-the-counter trans­ac­tions the next most pop­u­lar op­tion of (20 per cent) fol­lowed by deb­it cards at 12 per cent.

He said, “Mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide still re­ly heav­i­ly on cash; some are bat­tling to hold on­to it. This is the same for Trinidad and To­ba­go, as cash is still heav­i­ly re­lied up­on, par­tic­u­lar­ly for low-val­ue, high-vol­ume trans­ac­tions. The use of elec­tron­ic pay­ments is still low.”

He not­ed that many busi­ness­es al­so did not sup­port dig­i­tal pay­ments, as par­tic­u­lar­ly rur­al com­mu­ni­ties did not have dig­i­tal pay­ment op­tions.

“We have al­so found, not sur­pris­ing­ly, that per­sons who re­side in rur­al ar­eas have high­er rates of ex­clu­sion with less ac­cess to tra­di­tion­al bank­ing in­fra­struc­ture. Dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions with the right mix of ac­cess and aware­ness can there­fore cre­ate con­ve­nience for these per­sons through dig­i­tal pay­ments and mo­bile bank­ing. As a coun­try, we have a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to change views about the ben­e­fits of a cash­less so­ci­ety giv­en the cur­rent con­di­tions. Al­though sev­er­al peo­ple still have reser­va­tions about it, tran­si­tion­ing to a cash­less econ­o­my can in­crease fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion by mak­ing bank­ing and fi­nan­cial ser­vices more ac­ces­si­ble,” he said.

The Min­is­ter said there were at­tempts to ad­dress the gap, point­ing to the re­cent launch of a new e-mon­ey wal­let and the pend­ing de­ploy­ment of mar­ket-rel­e­vant fin­tech so­lu­tions which should push greater in­clu­sion, while al­so an­nounc­ing plans to in­crease e-mon­ey wal­let sizes and trans­ac­tion lim­its to fa­cil­i­tate and en­cour­age the use of elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions.

Im­bert said, “Hav­ing con­duct­ed our di­ag­nos­tic stud­ies and gained a prop­er un­der­stand­ing of our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, we must now es­tab­lish a fi­nan­cial sys­tem that is more eq­ui­table, sta­ble and sus­tain­able. This can on­ly be achieved through a na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion strat­e­gy that can ad­dress so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, pro­mote eco­nom­ic growth and en­sure all seg­ments of so­ci­ety can ben­e­fit from fi­nan­cial ser­vices. This will in­volve us­ing tech­nol­o­gy pro­mot­ing fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and work­ing with stake­hold­ers to un­lock all avail­able ar­eas of dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions and not just bank ac­counts for the fi­nan­cial­ly ex­clud­ed.”