Premier urges banks to do more over rate hikes
(CNS): Premier Wayne Panton has welcomed the move by Cayman’s high street banks to stick to the agreed delay on rolling out interest rate hikes on local loans and mortgages following last week’s Federal Reserve increase. However, he said that even though he appreciated the banks’ agreeing to a 30-day notice period, he was still looking for more and raised concerns about people losing their homes.
“I hope and expect that they will engage in further dialogue with the government to determine how to further alleviate or potentially avoid the impact of future rate increases by the Fed,” Panton, who is also minister of finance, said in a release Wednesday.
“We must guard against Caymanian homeowners potentially losing their homes due to the inability to meet increased interest charges, and local business struggling to keep up with their financing payments in addition to other high-level expenses,” he added.
Following the premier’s intervention over the rate increases, the Cayman Islands Bankers Association agreed to implement a 30-day notice period for any further rate hikes through June 2024. However, his additional request for them to consider not increasing the rates at all fell on deaf ears.
In the meantime, as he continues to negotiate with them to encourage a change in their approach, Panton encouraged all borrowers, both residential and commercial, to investigate their options with lenders to avoid problems, including fixed-rate borrowing for periods of time and to maintain open lines of communication with their lending institutions.
Panton said he had initially asked the banks for a 60-day notice period and to consider ending the practice of raising local rates in tandem with the US.
“While this is done automatically in the Cayman Islands, this is not the case in other jurisdictions, including our fellow British Overseas Territory of Bermuda,” the premier said. “Until now, retail banks in the Cayman Islands immediately passed these increases directly on to their customers, with homeowners and other borrowers seeing their monthly payments increase significantly over the past 14 months.”
Panton said this has been very difficult, especially given the high cost of living, with food, utilities, gas, accommodation and other necessities all costing more.
“While there is very little that we can do locally to control the cost of food, fuel and other consumables, the decision to increase local interest rates and the timing thereof does lie within the local retail banks’ discretion, and I am thankful that they collectively saw the need to at least delay the impact for Cayman’s borrowers by one month,” he added.
But with higher interest rates increasing the price of borrowing and driving housing costs up, people have seen their mortgage payments increase by hundreds of dollars in less than 18 months. This affects renters as well as homeowners and also impacts the cost of doing business as owners pass the increases on to customers
As reported on CNS last week, the US Federal Reserve increased its base interest rate by 0.25% on Wednesday, 26 July. The increase brought the prime rate to 5.5%, which is the highest it’s been in 22 years and the eleventh increase since the start of 2022, but it could be repeated next month. The prime rate is always 3% above the Fed rate, and this is what Cayman retail banks adopt as the Cayman prime rate as well.
Butterfield Bank (Cayman) Limited and Cayman National announced prime rate increases from 25 August, while RBC Cayman has said it will wait until the 28 to increase the rate from 8.25% to 8.5%.
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Category: Banking & money, Business
Any financial institution that would listen to a government that only losses money and has incurred a huge dept that it can never repay is just as doomed as the government is.
PREMIER URGES BANKS TO DO MORE OVER RATE HIKES.
How about
VOTERS URGE PREMIER TO DO MORE ABOUT PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING.
#uselessleader.
I can’t wait for Bank Repos. Maybe then we can afford go buy. At this point, forget it. I’m already looking into other Jurisdictions to spend my hard earned money. And hard earned it is. The price of groceries is ridiculous.
Wanting fellow Caymanians to fail is the wrong mindset. Where is your love and empathy for your people?
Shouldn’t have bought what they couldn’t afford. Not my problem.
karma always comes full circle
As a young professional Caymanian I hope people are foreclosed on and forced to sell. I have been banking on a pullback in property value so that myself and young Caymanian professionals my age can get a deal on a home.
Any government intervention to interfere with handouts will be remembered come voting time.
Amd there it is. The classic Caymanian wanting other Caymanians to fail.
The only person to blame is the owner who bought more house then they could afford. Giving yourself no cushion and maxing out your borrow fiscally imprudent. One group isnseeki by protection from their own poor choices while the person above is being smart and tactical. We need more Caymanians like 707pm. If our government and citizens acted like this then whole country would be better off.
I am no defender of Wayne but there isn’t anything he can do about it. This Subject comes up over and over; there is nothing any politician can do.
What?????? …… “There isn’t anything he can do about it?” I say
bull hockey! If I were running this circus I would do something to help Caymanians! I believe he tossed out some politicians for their lack of proper activities…… or am I mistaken?????? What is wrong with our so-called leaders?
And everyone urges the Premier to do more over the actions of his Ministers. Any luck with that yet?
Panton is screaming at the banks, but what about cuc gas prices, government can control that..get rid of pension for non caymanians.
Where we do need to raise the minimum wage, government needs to think on what the long range repercussions will be. Companies will have to pass the increase on in which again will raise prices. If government had taken action against cuc and the price we are paying for gas it we wouldn’t be struggling as bad
cuc and gas aren’t even all that expensive compared to much of the world, in fact they are both cheaper than much of Europe. The most egregious expense here is cell service which is TEN TIMES that of everywhere else!
Rents….$3000 for a one bedroom one bath on crewe road.
Pricing the poor and lower middle class out of the country.
and bet you it wasnt that nice
Interest rates there is nothing much the banks can do.
What can the country do to help us? How about the spread? 80/82/84 was fine when our currency was new, now it’s time to go 80/81/82.
And for the banks? Why are credit and debit card rates the same for a vendor? Hint…. It’s not permitted in the states.
And get rid of the automatic fee if I exceed my card limit, just don’t authorize it!
(Not a fan of banks)
huh? the rate is 0.82/0.84
It’s an outrageous spread on a fixed rate and should simply be 0.83. There is no justification for a spread except as an unearned windfall for local banks.
There shouldnt be a spread at all, we should just be par to the US$, there is no justification for the 1-1.20 or whatever the rate is pegged at. No justification for it.
Although pegging to the USD is looking less like a good idea each passing day
Served the country well in a longer time frame you are looking at.
Did you bite of a little too much real estate?
this place a millionaire/billionaire’s dream….no consumer protection…lasy daisy laws…willing government…no control over land ownership and easy pickings on the poor! ZZZZ…I looking somewhere else to retire…aint sticking around yah…be a sitting duck! and yes i am a native whatchamacallit…well..u kmow…that farce…lol
People urge Premier to fix the damn dump.
Never gonna happen with these guys. Maybe not the next either.
There’s nothing in place to help civil servants. What about them!?
Private sector employees have the ability to withdraw from their Pensions to assist. What about the other individuals?
Your Pension is non-contributory, and your salary for doing very little to improve the Governance of this Island, then you must wait until your retirement age arrives. In the private sector, we contribute 5% of our wages to the plan, so if the Government decides we can withdraw some funds eaarlier, they belong to us.
Caymanians versus Caymanians.
The oligarchy has done well in crafting this divide, no doubt influenced by the donor class and foreign interlopers who wish to oppress tbe people in their luxury playground.
Public servants didn’t contribute a dime to, or fully fund the public pension plan. You also allow full-time salaried MPs to simultaneously draw pension benefits.
Dont worry Wayne! You and your inept government wont be around much longer, no need to worry about negotiations that ya’ll wont be a part of, hopefully people insist the next group of electorates stand on a platform of reigning in these runaway banks!
Ha ha… what to say…
Waited till all rate hikes and most likely one more rate hike left to go before FED increase…
What is the use of stopping them now…
Is it planned between you and bank…
I will ask you to stop the raise, you wait till the last raise and publish we will stop since he requested it…
Anyway, no more hike after one more last hike…
Common… you can’t fool all, even if majority not all the time.
I’m not sure foreign banks with 2 branches can be called “high street”. Somewhat mediocre street at best.
don’t expect anything from cig….
remember…cig are the ones who banned uber here to protect the rip-off taxi cartel.
cig are the ones that prevent walmart from coming here to protect local store owners..
cig are the ones that prevent any airline from under cutting the loss making, rip-off cayman airways…
cig are the ones that limit people from using solar technology
welcome to wonderland.
That’s the first I’ve heard of Wal-Mart wanting to come here? Are there any articles about this?
The business model for walmart would exclude Cayman, there simply isn’t the volume of people.
Aldi’s please
Publix please
Piggly Wiggly bobo.
All good observations except for the Walmart comment. I believe in protecting local businesses.
Cayman’s Debt to GDP as of June 2022 was 9.9%, a little less than Haiti’s, obs. without accounting properly for >$2 billion in unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities. If accounted properly, Cayman would be in breach of Framework for Fiscal Responsibility borrowing rules, and have a Debt-to-GDP ratio of 46%, same as Colombia or Togo.
In June 2022. Saunders converted a $403 million PPM debt facility (which grew nearly $100mln in their Unity years) into a 15 year 3.25% USD$393 million loan and instead of paying down snowballing debt and payables, put it into 2 year Tbills that were at the time yielding less than debt-service interest rates, plus losing another 3-5% on the inflation rate. In Feb 2023 it was published by RG that at least USD$150 million of that was borrowed from Butterfield bank. Little infrastructure has been delivered in the last year that we can reconcile to that loan purpose, and we still have PACT lying about $2 billion in liabilities.
We can also add to the financial troubles list, that Wayne is telling us he doesn’t understand how interest rates work, or who is in charge of setting them.
It’s terrifying.
Aren’t mortgage in Cayman have fixed rates? I don’t get it. Who in the world would get a loan with Adjustable-Rate Mortgages?
most, and I mean like 90% of them are variable. The banks do not like giving fixed rate mortgages and will simply refuse your request.
There is your problem. Variable interest is a fixed way of screwing people.
Welfare state. If people take on a mortgage they can’t afford if it goes up some, it’s their fault. Maybe they shouldn’t have taken out the loan for new SUV.
Sadly correct. Time after time, harsh consequences, especially in the housing market, of insufficient savings and overspending are prevented by bail outs by the authorities.
This is the case in many countries, and has driven up the cost of housing. For example, in the UK when house buyers did not have enough savings to put down enough deposit money as banks sensibly lowered loan-to-value (LTV) ratios following the financial crisis, the government stepped in to get them 95% LTVs with Help-to-Buy. In the pandemic, both the UK and US governments banned repossessions and the UK even granted a stamp duty holiday.
The result has been that unless would-be housebuyers throw in everything they have, leaving no “margin for misfortune”, they will be outbid for a house, so any slack that arises is rapidly taken up, as buyers drive prices up in their own faces, and the prudent get shoved aside.
Individually, it looks as if a buyer could not possibly have afforded to buy if they had to save, arousing some sympathy for them, but, collectively, buyers themselves made it that way. You could double their income, and they would soon be back in the same position, with house prices much higher. These is similar spending that also becomes seen as practically essential, such as holidays, pay-TV, etc.
As far as I can see, the only way to stop that behaviour is to allow the most reckless to be bankrupted, including housing buyers who have over-reached their secure ability to pay, to have their housing repossessed, to provide a salutary example that the risks of not leaving adequate margin for misfortune are seen to be *real*, rather than just scary but ultimately unlikely. Presently, house prices are on a one-way ratchet which only allow inflationary pressures.
Repossessions would then knock down house prices, enabling sensible savers to buy them, an example of prudence paying off. So let’s not have the state arm-twist banks into forbearance or reduced rates for delinquent mortgage borrowers. That is exactly what has caused high prices in the first place.
Lots new Kia & Audi SUVs about for sure
We expect a bit more from you Wayne, I could personally do what you did!
more waffle from wayne….
the only thiung this guy has achieved is getting jon-jon off the hook with the police
welcome to wonderland.
Its easily fixed, the issue is most of us dont have any money. All you have to do is go to the Governor (really, the Lady living for free on prime SMB land) and ask her to invoke her authority under Section 22(2) of the CI Monetary Authority Law 2013 – she has the sole authority (really, she has! She can listen to advice, but effectively its up to her) to determine the value of your CI $ to the US$!! tell her we’d like each CI$ to be worth $100 US please, starting tonight….dont believe me? Check for yourselves. Its an utter joke this banking system we live under.
Actually, the entire fiat currency system is a farce, an extraordinary ponzi pyramid scheme that is collapsing in real time before our eyes. Take a look at the US right now. They’re issuing emergency increases in their bonds issuance to enable them to print themselves some more money to pay the interest they owe themselves and others. its not as complicated as it sounds, but its really happening – they are broke beyond belief, but they can print as much as they want to keep kicking the can down the road.
keep a look at what the Russians and Chinese and other BRICS nations are doing, they’re slowly changing the global order of commercial settlements away from US$D…its a slow dying currency and we’re pegged to it..so guess what happens to the CI$? that’s right….and sooner than we think
Who has a KYD mortgage, and why would they want to owe their bank 100x more money?
You’re an idiot and that’s not how it works. KYD is an internal currency only and therefor for every $1 KYD CIMA has the commensurate amount of USD on deposit either in cash or bond etc. so changing the exchange rate requires a purchase or sale of more USD.
If it was so foolishly simple as you’ve suggested we would all be billionaires by now. Good try though.
Go back to school
Let’s see CIMA’s holdings and then we’ll talk!
Well we can’t do CI$1 equals US$100. Your other points are valid. The BRICS are trying to issue their own currency to further erode the US$. The US$ will no longer be the reserve currency and will lose value.
Cayman’s second economic pillar tourism would suffer if we changed our rates. Our tourism product is too expensive as it is.
Hopefully the banks work with their customers as a short term solution. Government could decrease inflation but choose not to cause they need the revenues.
There is no way on God’s green earth that the potential BRICS currency will dethrone the dollar in our lifetimes. You know that BRICS stands for: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa right?
Russia is on the world’s naughty list and has a corrupt government with a useless currency in the Ruble.
Brazil is fraught with political turmoil, corruption, and on its best days is just a commodity exporter.
China is a known currency manipulator with human rights violations longer than Russia’s and constantly threatening the world with war.
South Africa has a failing economy with a crappy currency also manipulated wildly by it corrupt government.
India is the only one of the bunch that isn’t an absolute travesty.
And you think THAT batch of 5 genius countries are going to come together to create a centralized currency that any one of the other 190 countries in the world would use in lieu of the dollar, the pound, the Euro or the friggin wooden nickel?
KYD/CI$ has outlived its usefulness. It only serves to generate profits for the banks by charging people exchange fees to/from USD$. Moving to USD$ is long overdue. This is even the case with Caribbean countries with floating rates – it’s exponentially more so for Cayman with a pegged exchange rate.
See the following two articles:
“Core argument: The structure of Caribbean economies is different in quantity and quality. Caribbean economies are import dependent. This is not a value judgment or a temporary state of affairs; it is an immutable fact of the world. Even the most basic economic activity, agriculture, requires tools made from metals not found in the Caribbean – they must be imported. This has been the state of the Caribbean from the beginning.
All imports are paid for using an international currency – usually U.S. dollars. There is no advantage for Caribbean countries to have their domestic currency; all domestic currencies in small economies are anachronistic. Caribbean countries should abandon their local currencies and adopt the U.S. dollar. The region’s governments have uniformly abrogated their duties to design and implement credible macro-prudential policies leading to unjustified socio-economic degradation.
Properly construed, the current state of monetary affairs is a persistent abuse of power by governments to the detriment of Caribbean citizens. If Caribbean people used U.S. dollars as their sole currency, that would significantly expand their economic freedom and opportunities.
In essence, dollarization merely makes explicit what is already true: small open economies have a hard foreign currency constraint. It is not the so-called implementation of a straitjacket. The straitjacket has already been there.”
https://cpsi.media/p/notes-towards-caribbean-dollarization
And
“The currencies of Caribbean countries have now outlived their usefulness, and have become a liability. They were devised at a time when most payments were made using notes and coin, issued in distant metropolitan centres. Scarcity of the means of payment was a severe hindrance to commerce. In response Currency Boards were set up, to issue local currency as needed in the colonies. The system worked well because the local currency issue was backed by an equivalent value of Sterling, in a global system of fixed exchange rates. In contrast, nowadays payments are made mostly by electronic communication, credit and debit cards, cheques and drafts, with settlement over digitized bank accounts. In today’s world an own currency has become a liability for small economies, limiting access to international goods and services, exposing residents to risks of currency devaluation and inflation, eroding the value of domestic savings, increasing economic inequalities, providing a tool for unproductive government spending, and diverting attention from the need to increase productivity and enhance international competitiveness.” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3400180
Agreed. Most people paid in USD and most real estate transacted in USD.
LOL. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever read on CNS. Quite an achievement. Russia lol.
Oh yeah that would work. First thing that would happen is that your bank would allow you to take out KYD or USD from a USD account but would refuse to sell you USD at that exchange rate. Then the supermarkets would either put 2 zeros on the end of all their prices or make you pay in USD, since they have to buy their supplies overseas where no one is going to want to take KYD. You can only fix an exchange rate at an arbitrary value if the state has infinite resources to intervene in the market and buy the currency to protect that value, or the markets are prepared to trade at that rate, or there is limited trade in the foreign currency.
The BRICS is fiat just like the western currencies and have the same problems. Who do you trust to devalue less? Don’t believe the propaganda.
Morning, crypto bro, or shall I say, ponzi scheme guy?
Well – at least in can be said that RBC is more accommodating than the others. Only by a bit – but maybe we should reward them with more business.
Nice try marketing department
RBC’s quality of bank has been on the rapid decline. Banks in Cayman generally are not offering the same quality of service as before.
Eh?
RBC is the worst bank I ever had in my life. Hands down. Waited in line for 35 minutes because there was 0 people at the kiosks. Guy finally came to the counter with food on his face. I asked for a draft with all my money on it. Went to the other bank and was gone forever. Awful Awful Awful.
The premier is concerned that people may lose their homes. Well Mr Premier do
Something about pensions it is hard to live on $1000 a month. I have no mortgage but my own money of 300k I cannot get more than 1000 a month. One hurricane and I won’t be able to fix my home.
Why didn’t you save for your own pension rather than scrounge off the state?
Uh, what? Did you even read what he wrote? He has $300,000 in his pension but he can only withdraw $1,000 per month so it’s of little use on a day-to-day level.
Which part of the state you see there?
They did numbnuts. They paid into a pension scheme – which won’t allow them more that a $1000 a month even though it’s their money.
Huh?? He said he has 300,000 in his pension and can only withdraw 1,000 per month. “One hurricane and I wont be able to fix my home”. So yes, he save his own money and nothing about State.
The Minister of a FINANCE and PREMIER of this country is literally begging the banks/financial institutions to consider stalling or not increasing interest rates in the interest of the citizens of this country? How can that make sense to anyone? For those that say or dollar is pegged to the US, what is different between us and Bermuda or any other BOTC for that matter?
This is nonsense, where is the legislation to curb all this?!?! Banks will threaten, but realistically which will actually leave the jurisdiction? And if they do, the list is LONG of other financial institutions willing to enter our market. Let Proven, formerly Fidelity Bank, be an example of this. Banks see Cayman as a viable market PERIOD.
any of them can and will leave if the risk is not worth the reward. The branches of these banks here make peanuts compared to their parent companies. Where else in the world do you have $80,000 people serviced by RBC, FBIC, Scotia, CNB, Proven and BOB (or equivalent)? That’s not including any of the private banks.
Case in point I believe it was about 7 years ago that HSBC closed up and left. It can and will happen so don’t start trying to play a game of chicken with the banks.
Ah yes, the Cayman Islands – where banking is so important we even denominate the population in $. Lol… just teasing… your point is very valid.
Increase savings rates. I have had a savings account with Butterfield for 17 years. Yet the interest on that account is probably less than $17 in that whole time. While the charges are $17+ a month.
Make that make sense!
Now I am retired, with inflation so high, I need my little savings to at least try to keep pace with inflation and that’s never going to happen with Cayman banks. Daylight robbery.
Why not reduce the profit for the likes of Fosters, Kirks and those that own the gas stations? That might help every single household? Oh no wait…you can’t. Got it.
The biggest joke of this is that Prime is supposed to cover the bank’s cost of borrowing that they then pass on in lending to consumers. The banks here are not borrowing those funds though so it is free interest money for them.
Banks are borrowing money all the time. Sometimes overnight. That’s where they get the capital to provide credit risk (ie. mortgages, credit card, car loans etc).
It’s also why Basel Committee on Banking Supervision sets revised capital adequacy tests, leverage ratio criteria, and liquidity coverage ratio standards, especially post-2009. CIMA is in charge of Basel II and III reviews.
https://www.cima.ky/basel-ii-iii
Before there are any more of these alarmingly incompetent headlines, someone from CIMA needs to summon the LA for a grade-school explanation meeting on how the world works.
Interest rates have been at all time lows for around 15 years. This has been an historical anomaly, and was always going to rectify back to normal levels. Take a look at any graph showing the history of bank interest rates over the last few decades and you will see that what we have now is not at all unusual. What is unusual is this pretence by some, including some of the media, that the raises now are some kind of shock or unheralded moment that we must all cope with somehow.
What will be interesting to see is how the banks now deal with the fees that they imposed over the last few years. These fees were implemented with the justification by the banks that because of the unprecedented low interest rates they were unable to make a profit that had always been there before. Now that the rates have “returned to normal” do you think we will see our banks reduce or eliminate some of the fees that they imposed starting in the 2008-2009. We shall see.
and the banks have remained profitable throughout.
If they take anything more, it’s bold faced greed. Plain and simple.
Lenders follow the credit contract with the customer. Maybe we need to be smarter customers?
Pass legislation to deal with the issue. Consumer protection legislation is needed. Banks have gotten away with a lot over the years. What about consumers?
THIS
Consumer protection from banks, Cireba, Ofreg, grocery cartel, telecommunications, and on and on and on
we live in such a corrupt place
Imagine Wayne telling the insurance industry that Cayman would like 3 years amortization notice on rate increases going up over 30% y/y. They would laugh you out of their office. This is the same government that allows CUC to hike rates, whenever they ask, to preserve their bonanza dividend. Tell CIMA to put some guardrails in on bank practices, acceptance policy, and extortionate NDA fees. Tell the grocery stores to stop colluding on pricing. Make sense.
CIMA’s role is to make sure children cannot deposit $20.00 unless they have proof of address, valid passport, school references, and source of funds.
A better idea is to just go socialist/communist and nationalize everything, ,that way you can control all wages and prices. That is an answer to all our problems.
Dont threaten us with a good time
Except you won’t be able to get a mortgage at all.
No we can just shove the rich out of their castles and take them over. Power to the people!
Arise comrade!
Mortgage holders cannot qualify for financing without first signing-off that they understand how the world works. That some of our licensed banks are offering 95% financing foreclosure traps to naive customers, is a separate issue. What is becoming clearer is that Wayne and our MPs actually don’t understand the real-time mechanism by which the cost of borrowing fluctuates, and that is truly terrifying. We also do not see them crying for 30 day notice on fuel hikes, or pricing by understandable wholesale purchase and shipment date – our retail distributors are hiking gas prices in real-time! That makes a lot less sense than suspending the variable price of capital to one market participant.
The elected officials and government workers do not care as they just always have a never ending flow of money which to spend however they see fit. Example the tourism department and all the money they want to piss away on a private jet terminal, the fiasco of using the tax dollars to fix the beach when the greedy developer built to close to the water. They will never change, just spend it baby!
Fix the damn dump, Premier.
If the banks raise interest rates on loans/mortgages, then Mr. Premier they need to at the same time raise interest rates on savings accounts/fixed deposits.
Banks want us to pay more for borrowing from them, but they dont want to give us any more money for leaving funds in their banks – there you go Mr. Premier – address that issue. Thanks
Agreed. I understand our dollar is fixed to USD so our rates go up when theirs go up – but why only on the borrowing side! Seniors trying to live off paltry pensions are digging into their savings. One year fixed only earning about 2%!!!! Daylight robbery
You can buy a one year US T Bill and get 5.4% tax free. Why are you bothering with bank fixed deposits? You can buy treasuries through you bank or broker.
Have you seen the monthly bank charges on an investment account!!
What brokers? The ones clipping 150bps on a Tbill? The ones charging $500 a month for custody? or the SIPLs that CIMA will be ordered to shut down next week for their pump & dumps? Better to open an account onshore if you can.
Nah. Just open an account with a U.S. online broker, such as Interactive Brokers. Commissions on a Tbill purchase is just $5. Accounts are insured by SIPC up to $500k.
You buy a fixed deposit with Butterfield at a couple percent, they are just in turn are going to buy a Tbill with the same maturity and earn the spread.
“While there is very little that we can do locally to control the cost of food, fuel and other consumables,
C,mon Wayne…control your colleagues spending and we can cut back on import taxes.
Take the duty charges off food and reduce import duty back down to 20%. The cost of Gov. is too high.
AND WHY are we paying duty on the shipping as well…Robbery!
You’re right, including duty on the Insurance fee. Additionally, while it was The Progressives that gave themselves (and other top CIG earners) a whopping 15 – 18% raise in early 2021 with no push-back by any (including from many who make up the PACT Gov.) they are still “studying” the minimum wage of $6? This is the salary of many who were considered “essential” workers at the supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations etc. and who had to risk their lives and their families lives every day during COVID-19.
As Marvin Gaye said “what’s going on?” Watch on YT.