The provision of foreign exchange for personal and business use and bank charges and fees were among the priority issues discussed during a meeting with members of financial institutions and Prime Minister Stuart Young on Tuesday afternoon.
The meeting, which was hosted at Whitehall, saw Minister of Finance Vishnu Dhanpaul, Minister in the Ministry of Finance Brian Manning, members of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, the Bankers’ Association of Trinidad and Tobago, and representatives from other financial institutions in attendance.
The Prime Minister expressed concern for the private citizen in need of foreign exchange for travel, school, and other personal reasons.
“You hear these stories over and over. They go into the bank, they line up, they come out. If they’re lucky, they get a hundred dollars, or a hundred US dollars. Now, looking around the room, I think there were a couple of people who may be younger than I am, but you recall the days of, it wasn’t as difficult as that. So that is the area of concern for me. Really, how do we sit as collective minds in this room? The people in charge, we have the Central Bank, and we have all the persons who are trusted by the population to run banks. How do we look at the allocation, recognising that there is no easy solution.”
Prime Minister Young said the issue of increasing bank charges and fees is also a concern.
“This is again another area I have a number of questions as we move towards more online banking, as I see more branches being closed down across the country because retail banking, walking into a branch, is becoming more and more a thing of the past, to be honest and to be quite frank because there’s more of a push towards online banking. The service charges, of course, have gone up.”
The Prime Minister assured the Government’s support in ensuring the best-case outcome for the wider population.