And to try and prevent some of the systemic breakdowns and lack of diligence they found at St Francis Xavier, the Central Bank wants to implement a new credit union act in compliance with the global standards. Governor Kareem Michael told us why today, the credit union act needs to be upgraded.
Kareem Michael, Governor of the Central Bank of Belize
"So for the past maybe even longer than 7 years we have been trying to bring about a new credit union act we have been unsuccessful in doing so and I don't want to go over the reasons why we have been unsuccessful but come December this year the central bank the registrar will have a draft of a new credit union act which will then, which we will seek support from the Belize credit union league for its implementation. The repeal of the previous credit union act and then the implementation of this new one. It begins with the tools granted to the registrar under the credit union act. The current credit union act is outdated and so we want to bring about the global standards now for credit Union operations and we can only do so if we repeal the current act and implement and institute a new modern credit union act. So it starts there and of course the central bank is increasing its staff compliment to heighten its overall vigilance and surveillance of the domestic banking system so we expect a new credit union act that will give us the teeth to do more not only on the credit union side but also we've looked at money lender and we are also doing different things with the commercial banks to increase or heighten or improve the standards across all financial institutions under the central bank."
