The Bank of Guyana has tem­porar­i­ly stopped buy­ing TT and Bar­ba­dos dol­lars from cam­bios as part of ef­forts to stem in­creased de­mand for US cur­ren­cy.

Guyana's Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Gob­ind Gan­ga said there was ev­i­dence that peo­ple have been trav­el­ling to Guyana from Bar­ba­dos and T&T to buy US dol­lars, re­sult­ing in the de­ci­sion to stop buy­ing those coun­tries' cur­ren­cies from cam­bios.

"How­ev­er, in­di­vid­u­als can still come to the Cen­tral Bank with le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tions for these cur­ren­cies," he said.

Fig­ures show there was BDS$8 mil­lion cir­cu­lat­ing in Guyana in 2014 com­pared to BDS$13 mil­lion cur­rent­ly and TT$9.1 mil­lion in 2014 com­pared to TT$38 mil­lion at present. The eco­nom­ic down­turn in T&T, Bar­ba­dos and Suri­name has led to se­vere for­eign cur­ren­cy short­ages in those coun­tries.

Gan­ga blamed a re­cent news re­port about US dol­lar scarci­ty for fu­elling in­creased de­mand along with per­sons re­quest­ing huge amounts of for­eign ex­change with­out in­voic­es or prop­er de­tails, re­sult­ing in them be­ing clas­si­fied as "il­le­git­i­mate."

He said com­mer­cial banks have been warned against pro­cess­ing il­le­git­i­mate re­quests for US dol­lars or Guyana could end be­ing like T&T which could not pay US$1 mil­lion for sug­ar bought from the Guyana Sug­ar Cor­po­ra­tion and in an­oth­er case a rice ex­porter was owed US$700,000.

He said one of the re­cent ma­jor for­eign ex­change pur­chas­es was US$25 mil­lion by Banks DIH for its buy-back of shares in Banks Bar­ba­dos.

"There were in­deed pur­chas­es in the for­eign ex­change mar­ket to sat­is­fy the pur­chase in terms of the pro­vi­sion of for­eign cur­ren­cy to buy those shares," Gan­ga said, adding that Banks DIH is deal­ing with pur­chased for­eign ex­change from oth­er com­mer­cial banks to pay for the shares.

"You will find it's not much more than we would have found to be il­le­git­i­mate de­mand or ex­cess de­mand."

Gan­ga warned against me­dia spec­u­la­tion that could af­fect an oth­er­wise "healthy and strong" econ­o­my com­pared to oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, based on "sound­ness in­di­ca­tors."

"We do have the where­with­al to en­sure our fi­nan­cial sys­tem con­tin­ues to be sound," he said.

He said ev­i­dence shows that some of the for­eign ex­change pur­chas­es are spec­u­la­tive, some busi­ness­es are repa­tri­at­ing "huge, huge prof­its", while some of the com­mer­cial banks are ac­ced­ing to re­quests from for­eign ex­change ac­count hold­ers.

The Bank of Guyana Gov­er­nor said there are sea­son­al de­mands and there is no need for pan­ic be­cause com­mer­cial banks are tak­ing steps to re­solve any ex­cess de­mand.

"There is no chron­ic sit­u­a­tion out there. The com­mer­cial banks are deal­ing with this is­sue as we speak. Some of them have been bring­ing back some for­eign cur­ren­cies that they had else­where to ad­dress some of the de­mand," he said.

A mar­ket analy­sis shows there is an im­me­di­ate de­mand for US$6 mil­lion, mov­ing from a work­ing bank bal­ance mi­nus com­mit­ments from US$10.7 mil­lion on De­cem­ber 5, and a sur­plus of US$8.3 mil­lion.

Gan­ga said there were sev­er­al il­le­git­i­mate re­quests for for­eign ex­change, based on records pro­duced by the com­mer­cial banks.

"We had re­quest­ed from the com­mer­cial banks in­voic­es to sub­stan­ti­ate some of these re­quests. All that you re­ceived were some let­ters re­quest­ing a cer­tain amount sent to a com­mer­cial bank, or an email or a ver­bal re­quest.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly if there is a le­git­i­mate de­mand you would have an in­voice ac­com­pa­ny­ing," he said.