Reintroducing a minimum interest rate on savings is off the table for commercial banks, even as they await discussions with officials from the Central Bank on possibly providing an ease for customers.President of the Barbados Bankers’ Association Anthony Clerk, in response to customer complaints about high bank fees and low interest rates on savings, told Barbados TODAY: “If you reintroduce a minimum interest rate that means the loan rates are going to go up. I don’t think that will make sense.”In April 2015, the Central Bank removed the guaranteed minimum savings rate of 2.5 per cent, with the hope that more cash would be moved out of the banking system and into investment. However, by the end of March this year, savings had grown to reach about $14 billion. While loans to households grew faster in the first three months of this year when compared to the same period in 2021, overall new loans were down from prior years, despite historically low interest rates on loans.“Right now, loan rates are the lowest they have been, in my understanding, in the history of Barbados. So they are all-time low rates, which is very good for people who want to borrow money to build homes and acquire homes, put up renewable energy systems or for any other reason, both on the retail side, personal customers and the business customers,” Clerk explained.
