In other words, these borrowers have been permanently denied of access to formal lending institutions. BIS Review 66/2006  1  There may be others in this group such as the SMEs, the retailers, self-employed and micro borrowers who, for reasons beyond their control, have faced the same fate. Even if a few of them have the potential, in terms of their cash flows or earning capacity, to repay debt at a later time and become honourable customers, the negative label issued by the CRIB would not give them another chance of reaching formal credit institutions. The inevitable result would be to drive them back to the informal sources of borrowing or to seek political redress. There is no doubt that there could be several willful defaulters in this group who deserve to be blacklisted, but among them the influential ones will seek ways and means of getting back into the system. It is well known that the banks and the credit institutions do not report the full list of borrowers to the CRIB. It is also no secret that the institutions cherry-pick the borrowers according to the former’s preference. The affluent borrowers, multi national companies, large corporates, highly connected borrowers and the banks’ other preferred customers do not get reported to the CRIB, even if they default altogether. The credit profiles of the affluent customers will continue to have clean records of regular payments which protect their image.
Ranee Jayamaha: The financial performance of the Credit Information Bureau in Sri Lanka during 2005 Speech by Dr Ranee Jayamaha, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, at the Annual General Meeting of the Credit Information Bureau, Colombo, 23 June 2006. *  *  *  Members of the Head Table, the Board of Directors, the Shareholders of the CRIB, Chief Executives and Officials of Banks and Financial Institutions, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am pleased to present to you this evening the Chairperson’s report of the CRIB which summarizes the significant growth in business operations and the financial performances of the CRIB during 2005. Sri Lanka’s CRIB is one of the pioneer credit information bureaux in the South Asia region since its establishment in 1990. The year 2006 is a landmark in its history as the CRIB will begin to re-engineer its core business processes with enhancements and upgrades to the technological infrastructure. As indicated in the Annual Report, during 2005, the CRIB has recorded a remarkable growth in its businesses and achieved its primary objective of collecting, collating and dissemination of aggregate credit information for the use of stakeholder institutions. Reporting of credit information to, and complying with the Bureau’s requirements are mandatory and the CRIB has made a conscious effort to educate the member institutions of the reciprocal benefits of providing reliable credit information. Throughout the year, the CRIB has continued follow up work in refreshing and updating the existing credit database.