BIU Credit Union, which has come under fire from the Bermuda Monetary Authority for the second year in a row.

But Finance Minister the Hon. David Saul said the advice -- from two Canadian credit union experts -- was costing Government nothing. It was a feature of the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation which Government has contributed to for the last 20 years, he said.

The fund was basically to help Commonwealth countries gain expertise in certain areas, he said.

He added that since Government supervised credit unions by law, it felt it had a duty to help them out.

"We discussed this with the BIU Credit Union and they were happy to have (the experts) assist them in such things as setting up their books,'' he said.

The BMA had criticised the practices of the Bermuda Industrial Union members' deposit bank as "less than satisfactory'' in the financial services section of its annual report released to Parliament this year.

In 1993, the BMA said it made a number of recommendations to Credit Union management on how to bring about compliance with the Credit Unions Act 1982.

The recommendations concerned "changes necessary to bring the accounts, the statistical returns systems and the operations of the Credit Union into better order'', the BMA report said.