And even with all those electronic transfers - Governor Michael says cash is still king and is at the center of the vast majority of transactions across the economy.
The Central Bank keeps a close eye on all movements because of the nature of Belize's banking system. It's a web of interdependencies where basically every credit union, development bank, and insurance company all keep their deposits at the three main commercial banks: that's the Belize Bank, the Atlantic Bank and Heritage Bank.
Governor Michael used a cluster diagram to explain that these three are too big to fail:
Kareem Michael, Governor of the Central Bank of Belize
"All the arrows are pointing to three commercial banks. On the outer circles, now you have credit unions, insurance companies, all tracing back to these commercial banks. What it is telling, or what it should be telling the audience is all of the financial transactions are concentrated in our system are concentrated at these three commercial banks."
"In the worst case, or in a negative sense, should one of these financial institutions fail within that small three, you're looking at ramifications throughout the system, the knock-on effect because of these connections and interconnectedness. And so, simply, these three institutions to use the global jargon and terminology are just too big to fail."
"These are systemically important financial institutions within the Belizean economy."
In total, the Central Bank supervises 85 institutions - credit unions included. Later on, we'll have the latest on the St Francis Xavier Credit Union which changed administrators last Friday.
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