MONTEGO BAY, St James — Milton Brown, manager of the People’s Co-operative Banks for the western region, has reported a significant increase in business since the merger of the co-operatives in St James four years ago.

According to Brown, the 1999 merger, which involved the amalgamation of the financial resources and services of the various co-operatives in the parish, had succeeded in achieving its objectives of increasing efficiency and viability. Their savings portfolio increased from $15 million to $37 million, while the loan portfolio had increased from $30 million to a whopping $52.6 million over the four year period.

He was speaking with JIS News following a special general meeting of the St James Integrated People’s Co-operative Bank held at the Seventh Day Adventist Church hall in the parish earlier this month.

Brown said the integration had resulted in a diversification of the services offered by the banks. They have expanded their services to farmers, to include more than just offering loans, and farmers are now able to make deposits, he said.

And while he gave no detailed figures, the bank manager said that the delinquency rate for loan repayments “was not at an unusual level, based on the percentage of agricultural lending”.

“It’s not that the farmers don’t want to pay, most times they just don’t have the wherewithal to pay. So the PC Bank has been, more or less, most considerate when it comes on to that,” he said.

“We take a look at their circumstances, and what we have done over the years is that once the farmer is still engaged in farming, we are willing at all times to sit down with him and to restructure the debt to ensure that it is paid, and that he keeps going on,” he added.

And Brown endorsed the move to merge all the country’s cooperatives into one national entity, noting that the initiative would result in improvements in the areas of marketing, credit policy, staffing arrangements as well as general efficiency and effectiveness.

The restructuring, which is set for completion by the end of the year, is being led by the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) that has been helping the PC banks achieve greater efficiency for the last eight years.