The Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Bal­dath Ma­haraj, has warned that any at­tempt by Re­pub­lic Bank to rein­tro­duce pro­posed ser­vice fee in­creas­es would be so­cial­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble at a time when many small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) are al­ready strug­gling with de­clin­ing sales.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the bank’s de­ci­sion to pause the pro­posed fee hikes, Ma­haraj said the wider busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty viewed the move on­ly as a tem­po­rary re­prieve and ex­pect­ed the in­creas­es not to be re­vis­it­ed in the fore­see­able fu­ture.

He ar­gued that it was un­rea­son­able for a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion re­port­ing bil­lions in prof­its to im­pose ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial bur­dens on busi­ness­es al­ready fac­ing dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.