Abdulkarim Bucheery, President of the Bahrain Association of Banks (BAB) on the sidelines of the annual general assembly of the BBK, said that though the overall banking system of the Kingdom is up and running without any problem but the prolonged protests would likely to impact this segment of the national economy.
“Some banks have already started feeling the heat of ongoing unrest as some international financial institutions cutting their credit flow. The continuous unrest will definitely impact the banks and in many cases it may cause liquidity problem for the banks and the financial institutions of the Kingdom,” said Bucheery, who is also Chief Executive of the BBK.
Bucheery said that it was too early to gauge any impact of the adverse developments on the financial sector.
Talking about the impact on the BBK, he said that the bank has had not seen any flight of cash since the start of the protests about three weeks back.
Interestingly, Bucheery said, the BBK deposits witnessed a surge as some of neighbouring countries have entrusted BBK with an additional hundreds of millions of Bahraini Dinars deposits. “This shows the confidence of our strong customer base especially the institutional investors of the GCC and the BBK will continue to add value to the investments,” he said.
Referring to a question about the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s proposal to help the small and medium size enterprises in the need of the hour, he said that the banks in Bahrain would continue to be part of the any effort aimed at helping the national economy. However, he said, it is not the part of the banks’ mandate to bail out the businesses but at certain level banks will play role to safeguard the interests of the country.