Amid re­ports that many have turned to the black mar­ket to pur­chase for­eign ex­change, the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day list­ed the au­tho­rised deal­ers of for­eign ex­change in the coun­try.

In a no­tice on its web­site, the Cen­tral Bank said 13 com­pa­nies were li­censed as au­tho­rised for­eign ex­change deal­ers in T&T, as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

They are: ANSA Bank; Citibank (Trinidad & To­ba­go); First Cit­i­zens Bank; CIBC Caribbean Bank (Trinidad & To­ba­go); JMMB Bank (T&T); RBC Roy­al Bank (Trinidad & To­ba­go); Re­pub­lic Bank; Sco­tia­bank Trinidad & To­ba­go; ANSA Mer­chant Bank; De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Ltd; Massy Fi­nance GFC Ltd, NCB Mer­chant Bank (Trinidad and To­ba­go); and the Ex­port - Im­port Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (EX­IM­BANK).

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Cen­tral Bank not­ed there were four com­pa­nies au­tho­rised to op­er­ate as a bu­reaux de change (cur­ren­cy ex­change in the coun­try) op­er­a­tors. These com­pa­nies are au­tho­rised by the Cen­tral Bank to buy and sell for­eign cur­ren­cy notes and coins as well as pur­chase trav­ellers cheques; and/or con­duct for­eign ex­change con­ver­sions which are in­ci­den­tal to pri­ma­ry re­mit­tance busi­ness.

The au­tho­rised Bu­reaux de Change com­pa­nies are Glob­al Ex­change Trinidad and To­ba­go, GraceKennedy (Trinidad & To­ba­go), Massy Re­mit­tance Ser­vices (Trinidad) Ltd, Mil­len­ni­um Fi­nance and Leas­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

Glob­al Ex­change and Mil­le­ni­um Fi­nance op­er­ate cur­ren­cy ex­change kiosks at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, while GraceKennedy is par­ent com­pa­ny of GraceKennedy Mon­ey Ser­vices, the com­pa­ny which fa­cil­i­tates West­ern Union Mon­ey trans­fer as well as FX Trad­er ser­vices. Massy has its own FX Trad­er ser­vice, which is oc­ca­sion­al­ly tied to the Mon­ey­Gram mon­ey trans­fer ser­vice of­fered at some of its Massy Stores branch­es.

The Cen­tral Bank ad­vised the pub­lic that, in ac­cor­dance with the Ex­change Con­trol Act trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing the buy­ing, sell­ing, bor­row­ing or lend­ing of for­eign cur­ren­cy should on­ly be con­duct­ed through au­tho­rised deal­ers.

Sec­tion 6 (1) of the Ex­change Con­trol Act states: “Ex­cept with the per­mis­sion of the Bank, no per­son (oth­er than an au­tho­rised deal­er) shall in Trinidad and To­ba­go, bt or bor­row any gold of for­eign cur­ren­cy from, or sell or lend any gold or for­eign cur­ren­cy to, any per­son oth­er than an au­tho­rised deal­er.”

In the last Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, a team of jour­nal­ists from Guardian Me­dia walked through Port-of-Spain and found sev­er­al re­tail stores that were will­ing to sell US dol­lars. None of the stores were au­tho­rised deal­ers of for­eign ex­change.