David Dulal-Whiteway, managing director of Republic Bank Ltd (RBL), does not expect the prime lending rate to increase any time soon, following Monday’s announcement by the Central Bank that the repo rate had increased by 25 basis points.
He said liquidity was still strong and “with the high liquidity even though the base rate is going up, mortgage rates have not increased to that same extent. It has remained pretty constant over that period of time.”
Dulal-Whiteway, who spoke at a news conference at RBL’s Park Streetl, Port-of-Spain, offices on Wednesday, said there had been a slowdown on demand for loans this year.
Asked how that slow growth was going to affect the bank’s revenue, he said: “Our intention really is to maintain increasing bottom lines so you would have seen in our half year results we were still able to maintain a two per cent improvement over last year.”
He said a decrease in demand for loans was not unusual for the bank because at the time of the economic downturn in 2008 demand for loans decreased and only started to pick up in 2013.
“The growth in loans is slow this year and it has to be that the uncertainty is having an impact on people’s readiness to take on additional loans. I won’t say that people are not conscious of the uncertainty and making decisions due to those uncertainties.”
He added that trends show there is a slow down in the lead up to elections.
Dulal-Whiteway said falling oil prices were of concern to the bank. Referring to T&T’s foreign exchange situation, he said: “The good thing about it is that we do have a good bit of foreign exchange and it is a matter of how we manage the foreign exchange.
He said there was need to look at the ways foreign exchange could be increased and the way it was sourced.
“We talk about diversification but we can’t rely only on the energy sector to provide us with all the foreign exchange that we demand,” he said.
