Bridgetown.
Banks in the region continue to make huge profits despite being high cost and inefficient than their counterparts in emerging markets.
This comment was made by Ewart Williams, governor of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, last week at the Barbados Hilton during the second annual Financial Institutions Conference hosted by the Central Bank of Barbados.
According to Williams, Trinidadians banks' total operating cost averaged about six percent of total assets compared to less than two percent in the European Union, three percent in the United States and about four percent in most emerging markets.
In spite of this , Williams said, their rates of returns are much than international norms. He noted that this was related to among other things, high interest margins which increase from seven percent in 2004 to ten percent in 2009 before declining to nine percent in 2010.
Williams stated that Barbados had the lowest interest margins at around six and a half percent.
"That is not something we should gloat about because it is difficult to get comparable data for the developed countries but interest margins as they define it are about two percentage points", Williams said.
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