Base rate reductions and bank profits

The European Central Bank has reduced the base rate by 0.50 per cent effective January 21. Given that Bank of Valletta had at last financial year end "loans and advances to customers" of €3.04 billion and HSBC had €2.97 billion, for every day that the local banks drag their feet and delay reducing their base rate they are overcharging their consumers €83,472!

Also, as the banks have failed to reduce their base rates by the full amount of reductions that the ECB has made, and have only passed on part of the reductions to their consumers, it has resulted that the base rate of the local banks is now 0.45 per cent higher than the ECB base rate, which results in a tidy "overcharging'" to customers who have loans and advances of over €27 million a year. Will the Malta Financial Services Authority and especially the Minister of Finance please take action?