We establish several inequalities for the spectral radius of a positive commutator of positive operators in a Banach space ordered by a normal and generating cone. The main purpose of this paper is to show that in order to prove the quasi-nilpotency of the commutator we do not have to impose any compactness condition on the operators under consideration. In this way we give a partial answer to the open problem posed in the paper by J. Bračič, R. Drnovšek, Y. B. Farforovskaya, E. L. Rabkin, J. Zemánek (2010). Inequalities involving an arbitrary commutator and a generalized commutator are also discussed.