THE Economic

and Production Committee of Parliament says it will be asking the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) to accelerate the pace by which it collects data on banking fees, following a declaration by the entity that it needs another 75 days to produce a full report on its survey.

The survey emanated from a private member’s motion laid by Government Member of Parliament Fitz Jackson last year against the background of “growing concerns by the public regarding the levels of charges being levied by banks and other financial institutions for various inescapable banking services”.

Jackson had asked the House to mandate the BOJ to submit to the committee a report on the charges being levied by banks and credit unions within 60 days or sooner as at October 31 last year. Furthermore, he said where any of the banks registered by the BOJ operate in other Caribbean territories or any other jurisdiction outside the Caribbean, the report should provide the charges being levied by those banks for the same or similar services.

However, in an interim report to Parliament last week, the BOJ contended that the 60-day timeline stipulated by Parliament “is inadequate to produce the required report, given that by the time it had received a copy of the minutes from Parliament, 16 days had gone from the 60-day timeline, leaving an even shorter period for the BOJ to conduct the study on an expanded group”.

Furthermore, the bank said the number of institutions to be covered were at least seven times the number of domestic institutions usually covered by the BOJ in its fees and charges surveys at the end of each year. It said given that the BOJ’s normal time frame to compile, review and analyse annual fees and charges data for deposit-taking institutions was nine weeks (approximately 65 days) after receipt of the data, the current requirement of 60 days left too short a time

to complete all that

was required.

The bank said it had also experienced “data collection issues given the additional institutions to be covered”, noting that credit unions have never before been asked to submit fees and charges information to the BOJ, among other issues.

The BOJ said, as at December 31 last year, 50 per cent of credit unions had not yet submitted any information to the central bank, and regional or international fees and charges information had not yet been provided by three of the expected five banking groups.

As a result, the interim report contained information from only the 12 deposit-taking institutions that provided complete responses by December 31 last year. However, the BOJ said if responses are received from all the survey constituents, the number of institutions that will be covered is estimated at 96.

In the meantime, it said, based on unaudited prudential returns submitted by commercial banks, fee income (excluding fees for loans processing) increased over the last three years and now account for a larger percentage of total revenue, with 19.5 per cent for the nine months up to September 2013, up from 16.6 per cent in 2012. In 2011, fee income was 13.6 per cent, and in 2010, 14.9 per cent.

As for building societies, the BOJ said similar unaudited returns — which also exclude fees for loans processing — show fee income contributing a higher percentage, 5.7, to total revenues for the nine months ending September 2013. This, in comparison to the 2.9 per cent in 2012, 2.0 per cent in 2011, and 1.4 per cent in 2010.

On Tuesday, committee Chairman Karl Samuda said, based on points raised by Government committee member Julian Robinson about the urgency of the data, the group would be proceeding with its deliberations on the details provided so far, instead of waiting for the complete report.

“Let us agree that we will advise the Bank of Jamaica that we would like for them to accelerate the pace by which they collect the data. I am convinced by the argument of the members, and I have asked that the matter be brought for discussion by January 28. There is no doubt about it, it will attract a lot of attention,” he said.

“They can continue to collect information and feed to us, but we will proceed,” he noted.

The BOJ is to be invited to that meeting as well as the Fair Trading Commission.

— Alicia Dunkley-Willis