CU members urged to save, invest more

“Yes, we are in the business of encouraging savings, and yes, we have done a fine job over the years but perhaps I want to push you a little bit more, because, let us face it; the way societies grow, the way societies generate wealth in order to make citizens better off and so on, is through investment,” Williams said at a recent function.

He noted that in order to invest there must be savings funds, by which to do so.

He asserted that, notwithstanding the fact that credit union activity in this regard was more or less confined to the community, “very often when we invest, but in a wider sense to the community as a whole, we are using savings generated by other people in other communities in other societies.”

“In other words we borrow and when we do that, a significant proportion of the benefit from that investment goes back to where those funds came from originally,” he said. Williams stressed it was therefore crucially important in “our little context” of the credit union and the whole question of creating savings, that one of the things that, “we will need to do in order to develop further is to generate more savings.”

He told his audience, “One of the indices that will be used to measure our development is the extent to which we can finance our own investment from our own savings. And while we are doing a fine job, while we have done a fine job, one of the things that we have to try to do if we want our community and our island and our country to develop, is to seek to raise the bar in terms of savings.”

Specifically, Williams added, “I am urging you to look at your loans portfolio with a view to seeing whether there is any scope to perhaps encourage more investment among your members.”

He made the appeal when he addressed the formal opening of celebrations in commemoration of the LCU’s 60th anniversary at the credit union’s building in the district, near Scarborough.

The formalities were preceded by a parade of the credit union’s members through the streets of Lambeau following a thanksgiving service at the Lambeau Church of God.

The credit union, which was initiated in August 1946 with a membership of 18, now boasts of 2,132 members with assets of close to $20 million.

Celebrations will climax with an awards ceremony/dinner at the Tobago Hilton on August 29.