The president of the Association of Commercial Banks, Andres Aybar called the attention of the government to reactivate the economy. He said in an interview with the Listin Diario that the government instead of thinking of new rulings and charges for banks should focus on developing the economy so that bank clients do not have to default on their payment plans to the banks, that could affect the banking sector. Aybar cautioned that banks depend on the well-being of their clients and they are seeing that sales levels are dropping to a point that is affecting the payment capacity of many of their clients. He said that monetary policy is stable, but bank clients are also confronting problems in Customs. He also said that the monetary authorities should work on creating financial instruments that attract long term deposits, such as pension plans. He said that the monetary authorities want to impose norms that cannot be met by the banks. He said that today most people are making short term deposits, preferring 30 day deposits, in order to be able to renegotiate their deposits given expectations that interest rates could go up. Aybar commented that the new demands for banks to keep higher reserves gives international banking the impression that banks here are having problems when this is not the situation. But he said that if the monetary authorities impose the norms as announced, the risk will increase from a 4 level to 10 or 12%, which will result in closing of international lines of credit. Aybar reaffirmed that the higher banking risk does not exist, despite new demands of international financial organizations that are being very aggressive demanding high reserve levels. He said that Dominican companies are having problems paying the new taxes, but that is not a banking problem. He alerted that with the new conditions, what is being created is an artificial situation whereby local banks are being made to appear to be at high risk. He said this will result in international banks coming in and buying out local banks below their worth.
