This coun­try's on­go­ing for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion is one that should con­cern the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, says UWI St Au­gus­tine pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics, Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein.

In giv­ing his analy­sis of the state of the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion, Pro­fes­sor Ho­sein ex­plained how he ex­am­ined the is­sue.

“I cal­cu­late the ra­tio of the stock of re­serves to ex­ter­nal debt and note that in 2012, it was about 15 per cent. In 2024, us­ing sec­ond quar­ter da­ta, it is about 100 per cent. In oth­er words, an­oth­er con­stant rough in­di­ca­tor is that all of the re­serves we have are now ac­count­ed for by our ex­ter­nal debt. That is not a good po­si­tion. As we move for­ward we need to im­prove and in­crease the ar­eas in which we earn in for­eign ex­change,” Ho­sein ex­plained.

He not­ed that due to the short­falls in the en­er­gy sec­tor, oth­er sec­tors need to be ramped up.

“That's where the work of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), in par­tic­u­lar, be­comes im­por­tant to push the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to bring in more for­eign ex­change and they have been do­ing as best as they could. I see in the bud­get they out­line that the Spe­cial   Eco­nom­ic Zone will be some­thing on the radar in the medi­um term. I know we keep push­ing eTeck and in Point Lisas, the Sum­mit Lug­gage com­pa­ny, that has start­ed to ex­port. There are a num­ber of lit­tle in­ter­ven­tions that are on train,” he dis­closed.

How­ev­er, he not­ed three ar­eas where the Gov­ern­ment needs to do much more. The first one, he said, is tourism, as the coun­try’s tourism in­flu­ence has not been do­ing well.

“We are prob­a­bly at the bot­tom of the ta­ble in the Caribbean, in terms of tourism in­flows in T&T, how it has changed since 2019, and the lev­el of tourism in­flows. A lot needs to be done in terms of overnight stays and cruise ship ar­rivals,” he out­lined.

The sec­ond is­sue is strength­en­ing the di­as­po­ra link­ages, Ho­sein said there is need to in­crease for­eign ex­change from the di­as­po­ra in­to the coun­try, both for the pur­pose of help­ing fam­i­lies in T & T that have fam­i­lies abroad and al­so, for in­vest­ment pur­pos­es.

"We need to tar­get the di­as­po­ra for in­vest­ment funds with­in T&T,"said Ho­sein.

He said the high crime rate is not help­ing the growth.

"The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has to be­come like a ju­nior Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, be­cause bring­ing the mur­der lev­el un­der con­trol will re­sult in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty hav­ing much more con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my. Al­so, it is a mech­a­nism of hav­ing a fi­nan­cial change in the sit­u­a­tion. It re­quires deep in­ter­ven­tion,” the econ­o­mist high­light­ed.

The third area to give a deep dive in­to is the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. He said man­u­fac­tur­ers need to ex­am­ine what Guyana and Suri­name want more of and al­so in un­tapped mar­kets such as the French Caribbean, Dutch, and the As­so­ci­at­ed States of Cari­com. An­drea Perez-Sobers