BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – Minister of Finance and International Trade, Hon. Dr. Timothy Harris announced that he is keenly anticipating the 64th Meeting of Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) Monetary Council to be held in St. Kitts this Friday (Feb. 13), as he hopes to lobby for the protection of local investors, depositors and insurance policyholders.
“I am looking forward to Friday’s meeting as we do have unfinished business and we really need a sense of closure and be aware of all new developments surrounding the liquidity problems of CL Financial Group. In the last meeting, the Monetary Council was unable to complete discussion because not all members had full data regarding the likely exposure of their country to the CL
Financial difficulty. In that regard, Member States were asked to look into their public and private sectors to get a full picture of the amount of investment and deposits from their countries,” Harris said.
CL Financial, which is based in Trinidad, is the parent company of CLICO and British American regional insurance companies and recently went public with the financial difficulties it has been experiencing.
Although the extent of the effects from the financial fallout on subsidiaries outside of Trinidad has yet to be determined and given the prevailing economic conditions, regional governments have expressed concern for their respective local depositors.
“We would hopefully be in a better position to have a much more informative situation to validate and fully analyze the potential exposure of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU). We will be looking at the breakdown of the deposits: how much is for
British American and how much is for CLICO,” the Finance Minister revealed.
Dr. Harris stressed the need for the draft insurance regulatory policy to be implemented across the region and be adopted as the sub-regional position in relation to insurance.
He said he has hope that the draft would receive support from the rest of the region and would be accepted as the consensual position of the entire region.
The Monetary Council is also expected to receive the ECCB Governor's report on monetary and credit conditions, and would provide directives and guidelines to the Bank on related policy matters, as mandated by the ECCB Agreement 1983. Other matters to be considered include the impact of the global crisis on financial sector stability in the ECCU.
