for deficit
The legal reserve requirement remains at 73%, but this proportion will be applied to the total amount of net on-demand and savings obligations, while it is reduced to 50% for net time obligations.
The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) significantly increased costs for banks that incur a shortfall in the legal reserve requirement by establishing that the base annual interest rate for charging this eventuality will rise from 48.8 to 144 additional percentage points over the rate set by the issuer in its ordinary discount, rediscount, and advance operations.
In relative terms, the increase in this penalty is 195%.
Differentiated reserve requirement by type of deposits
The legal reserve coefficient, according to Article 15 of the resolution, remains at 73%, but this proportion will be applied only to the total amount of net obligations for sight and savings deposits, while a base reserve of 50% was established for net obligations arising from time deposits in local currency.
In the case of operations in foreign currency of the domestic banking sector, the minimum legal reserve required remains at 31%.
🚨ATTENTION: FEE SCHEDULE UPDATE
– The monthly maintenance fee for active remunerated checking accounts of natural persons is adjusted, from 0.10 to 684 bolívares.
– The monthly maintenance fee for active remunerated checking accounts of legal entities is adjusted from 54 to 6,839 bolívares.
– The commission for each credit instruction to the account of the receiving client – payment to suppliers, through the electronic clearinghouse system, is set at 0.40% of the amount of the operation paid by the payer.
Microfinance banks
The Central Bank of Venezuela also approved a differentiated legal reserve requirement for microfinance banking, with the condition that the credit intermediation index of the entities in the segment reaches a minimum of 50%, as evidence that they meet their basic function and calculated on their published balance sheet.
Specifically, this segment of the system must comply with a minimum legal reserve of 40% on its net sight and savings obligations; but for net obligations with maturities and assigned investments, the reserve drops to 27%.
The Economic and Social Development Bank of Venezuela (Bandes) remains exempt from having to set up legal reserve requirements.
BCV adjusts lending rates: commercial loans and microloans will have a minimum cost of 16% per year
BCV Resolution 26-08-01 maintains loans linked to the National Unique Productive Portfolio with an interest rate of 12% per year.
Article 3 states that the rate applicable to commercial loans and microloans in national currency, once indexed in Credit Value Units (UVC), will have a minimum level of 16% per year.
This implies that the minimum cost of these credit products increases by three percentage points compared to the previous rule, which set the minimum rate at 13% per year, while the maximum was 16%.