Symmonds: Trust Fund a success story

The Barbados Trust Fund Limited (BTFL) has been described as “a success story” by Minister of Energy and Business Development Kerrie Symmonds.

While acknowledging that the state-run company had been a victim of “unfortunate types of slur for political purposes”, Symmonds maintained that numerous persons had benefited from its services.

He also dismissed suggestions that the BTFL was dealing with high levels of delinquency.

“What the Trust Fund’s history has shown in the last three and a half years of its existence is that, quite to the contrary, people have borrowed and people have been working hard to pay back and have, in fact, been paying back. Not only have they been paying back but they come back and borrow again in order to broaden the scope and the nature of their enterprise,” Symmonds told the Standing Finance Committee while speaking on the Appropriation Bill, 2022 in Parliament on Wednesday.

“….So that today, it is beyond any dispute and question that there are clusters of activity which have been created out of the Trust Fund micro-business programme, where you are seeing enhanced marketability for our people and more efficient product development and product service.”

General Manager of the Trust Fund Jerry Amos admitted that after February 2020, there had been a “downturn” in the payment of loans, which he put down to the impact of COVID-19.

However, he said over the past couple of months, with the country reopening, payments had steadily improved.

“We realised that businesses were really struggling and we took a programme on to actually reschedule those loans to have some of the debt forgiven to bring those people back to a level playing field. Persons were indeed happy to have that ease and that burden lifted, because mentally I think that was taking a toll on our clients,” Amos said.

He revealed that the Trust Fund had provided almost $20 million in loans since its inception but due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic its lending capacity had to be scaled back for 2022.

“To date, we have done just over 4,067 loans to a tune of $18.5 million. It would be noticed that within the past year we would only have done 730 loans at $3.5 million but this is a direct result of the COVID environment,” Amos said.

“[In] our strategic plan going forward for 2022-2023, we had outlined that we would have done 1,200 loans within this year; however, due to budget constraints, we have revised that and we will look to spend just over $4 million this year on financing of loans.”

Amos said the BTFL would be engaging more closely with communities to provide training for individuals. He said they would be especially targeting young people in this initiative. (RB)