Banks frustrating businesses too

Championing the cause of members of the small and medium business community, President of the Couva/ Point Lisas Chamber of Commerce, Liaquat Ali, criticized banks which, he believes, place an unfair burden on small and medium businesses.

“With these commercial banks, it is like an Olympics, they going for gold,” said Ali to the enjoyment of the crowd of business men and women gathered for the Chamber’s annual Christmas Dinner and Awards Ceremony at its Couva office. “But the goal is to see who could make how much money, which commercial bank could make the most profit and it is like bragging rights for these banks now.” Ali assured that he, as a business man himself, had nothing against profitable businesses, but took issue with being treated unfairly by commercial banks, especially since they now take charges on deposits.

“For every $1000 you put in the bank, they taking a charge for that.

That is not fair. We have credit card charges that commercial banks are charging that you are unaware of.” He said elusive US dollars are being distributed unfairly in favour of “big bad business organisations”.

“They are forcing you not to take a loan in US, you paying additional charges on your overdraft, you are paying interest on your US loan, and you have to pay them back in US. And, if for some reason you take a loan for one year and the TT dollar slides against the US dollar, you end up converting dollars to over 8 to 1. So what is the true reflection of the US dollar?” Ali called on “non-commercial financial institutions” to step forward and sell their services to the small and medium businesses.

“We can no longer sit by and allow commercial banks to take advantage of the business community when it is the business community who have the commercial banks where they are. Small and medium businesses are the ones who are facing the problems, not the big bad business organisations because they are the ones who are hoarding the foreign exchange.” A l i , who is also the owner of Tr i n i - d a d Parboil Ltd, then advocated for the US dollar to be allowed to float instead of a fixed exchange rate.

Later in his speech, he urged Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat to ensure that Caroni lands that were allocated for agriculture be used for nothing else.

Ali encouraged farmers to take advantage of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), and asked that Rambharat work towards making loans at the ADB more accessible.