REPUBLIC HEADS FOR RECORD $2 B PROFIT

REPUBLIC Bank is heading for a record-shattering $2 billion profit in the current year.

The commercial bank has just reported a three-month profit of $503 million.

This is a 26 per cent hike from the previous corresponding year.

Republic has enjoyed spiked profits each year in the post-COVID-19 period, growing from $1.3 billion in 2021.

But Republic – like other banks operating in Trinidad and Tobago – has not increased interest rates for depositors, improved lending terms, or sent down service charges.

The bank boasts that its terms and conditions are facilitating its financial growth.

The increasing success is taking place in a stagnant economy, or what bank chairman Vincent Pereira termed “the ongoing economic challenges.”

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are still catching hell in servicing loans or are facing other oppressive terms and conditions from the banking sector, including Republic.

Representative organisations of SMEs are continuously agonising about the difficulties in staying alive.

Scotiabank has just announced a charge for inter-bank transfers.

The Barbadian authorities blocked a similar fee last month.

In T&T, Republic and other banks are reporting growing financial profits while the middle class is buckling with steep interest rates on loans and other industry challenges.

Hundreds of SMEs have gone under since the Covid-19 lockdown, with bank charges being a primary factor.

Despite galloping profits, Republic – and, indeed, all other banks – have held onto the several service charges that are imposed on customers, including pensioners.

Now and then, those charges are surreptitiously hiked, as with Scotia’s inter-bank charges.

The spread between the respective interest rates for depositors and borrowers have not narrowed.

Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has pointed to the 35 per cent tax on the banking sector as sufficient action on the issue.

When questioned in Parliament a year ago, Rowley stated that the tax was “the best action” the Government could have taken.

In nearby Barbados, Prime Minister Mia Mottley in October 2021 cautioned banks about their rates.

Ms. Mottley said: “The next thing you are going to hear is that the bank is going to charge you a fee depending on how skinny or fat you are…”

She advised banks to re-examine their rates or face the intervention of the Government.

The banks later agreed to revise their charges and to make at least one account available to customers free from fees or charges.

The Barbados Central Bank said it was working with commercial banks in addressing “the proliferation of fees, which has become a source of public concern.”

As for Rowley, he stated: “What affects Trinidad and Tobago and what affects Barbados may not be the same thing.”

While his administration has declined to intervene on behalf of hard-pressed consumers, Pereira announced that Republic is “well positioned to navigate” the economic circumstances.

That is taking place while SMEs are under survival threat, middle and working-class customers are struggling to survive, and the Government is indifferent to the state of affairs.