Nadaleen Singh

Al­though more US cur­ren­cy is be­ing in­ject­ed in­to the coun­try's for­eign ex­change sys­tem, a lot of hoard­ing is tak­ing place be­cause the cur­ren­cy is be­ing pur­chased then de­posit­ed in­to bank ac­counts where they are be­ing ac­cu­mu­lat­ed.That was the sce­nario Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath de­scribed to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers yes­ter­day as he claimed close of US$5 bil­lion is be­ing hoard­ed in lo­cal bank ac­counts.

He said that is a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to the cur­ren­cy sup­ply prob­lem that has been af­fect­ing the coun­try since last year."It is a lot of mon­ey and it has been de­vel­oped over a pe­ri­od of sev­er­al years. It is one of the is­sues why there isn't enough for­eign ex­change in the econ­o­my as there ought to be," Bharath said when he ad­dressed the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTMA) 59th AGM Busi­ness Break­fast Meet­ing at the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.

"There is a lot of sav­ing of for­eign ex­change tak­ing place in the econ­o­my in US dol­lars which are not pro­duc­tive­ly be­ing used at the mo­ment."

The for­eign ex­change prob­lem has been a con­tentious is­sue be­tween the lo­cal busi­ness sec­tor and Gov­ern­ment for months. Busi­ness­es blame the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem used by the Cen­tral Bank and claim the prob­lem has not been eased by month in­jec­tions of US cur­ren­cy.

The min­is­ter made his for­eign ex­change rev­e­la­tions at an event at which In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Rolph Bal­go­b­in was in­tro­duced as the new pres­i­dent of the TTMA.Dr Bal­go­b­in, pres­i­dent and Group CEO of the Elec­tri­cal In­dus­tries Group and ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Quick­sil­ver Con­ve­nience Lim­it­ed, is the NGC Dis­tin­guished Fel­low in In­no­va­tion and En­tre­pre­neur­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and a di­rec­tor of the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness.

In his in­au­gur­al ad­dress, the new TTMA pres­i­dent said he has sev­en pri­or­i­ties dur­ing his term, in­clud­ing de­vel­op­ing a deep­er re­la­tion­ship with trade unions and the In­dus­tri­al Court, as well as work­ing with UWI and Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School to bridge the gap be­tween busi­ness and ed­u­ca­tion.

For­mer pres­i­dent Nicholas Lok Jack said he would like to see top man­age­ment of man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies vis­it­ing the mar­kets they are in­ter­est­ed in."It is about what we can do to dri­ve T&T for­ward, what we can do to dri­ve man­u­fac­tur­ing for­ward and make ease of busi­ness, val­ue added prod­ucts in a man­ner that re­al­ly con­tributes to the every­day life of all cit­i­zen­ry," he said.