‘Bring back a national bank’

Barbados needs its own national bank again, says Alliance Party for Progress (APP) member Reverend Dr Patrick Tannis.

Addressing party supporters at a political meeting at the George Lamming Primary School on Sunday, he said a previous Barbados Labour Party (BLP) administration had failed the country when it allowed the Barbados National Bank (BNB) to be sold in 2003.

“Barbados is the only Caribbean nation without a national bank. Barbados is the only nation that does not have a national bank to support [its people]. The bank was sold by politicians and, let me tell you, without a national bank in this current world that we live in, we have problems,” Reverend Tannis warned.

He added that given the island’s reliance on overseas financial institutions for a majority of its transactions, Barbados will continually be left at the mercy of those banks that, thus far, have a track record of unfair fees and questionable interest rates.

“If you are going to default on your debts and anger the banks that have determined to have wanted, at that time, to do business in Barbados and accept your debt, and then you default on those banks and insult them and aggravate them, what will happen is that the banks will take it out on us.

“They might even try to leave this place. We will suffer, not the person that aggravates them. How can a bank hurt you? You see this thing called rates? If you do not have a national bank, the banks can get together and murder us with rates, mortgages, and credit cards and all kinds of things,” said the APP candidate for St Michael South East in the last general elections.

He said a national bank would be in a prime position now to help deliver the policies relayed by the Central Bank of Barbados to consumers and the wider business community, particularly at this time when the world’s financial markets are unstable because of COVID-19 disruptions and the war within Eastern Europe. (SB)