An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad must ac­cept TT dol­lar as pay­ment for goods and ser­vices at the Port-of-Spain ho­tel.

That’s ac­cord­ing to the whol­ly state-owned Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), which owns the Hy­att Re­gency on be­half of the State.

"The cor­po­ra­tion as well as Hy­att op­er­ate un­der the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go in which the first form of le­gal ten­der is the Trinidad and To­ba­go dol­lar," said Ude­cott.

Ude­cott pro­vid­ed a two-sen­tence com­ments to Guardian Me­dia, in re­sponse to a ques­tion of whether its over­sight of the ho­tel, in­cludes the use of lo­cal cur­ren­cy at the ho­tel.

The cor­po­ra­tion not­ed that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Hy­att and Ude­cott is gov­erned by a ho­tel man­age­ment agree­ment, the con­tents of which are con­fi­den­tial.

On Sat­ur­day, Hy­att Re­gency post­ed a mes­sage on Face­book that, ef­fec­tive No­vem­ber 1, it would be ac­cept­ing all ma­jor cred­it cards and on­ly US dol­lars, British pound ster­ling, and eu­ros.

How­ev­er, due to so­cial me­dia back­lash, the post was delet­ed and the ho­tel's gen­er­al man­ag­er, Michael Hoop­er, said the in­for­ma­tion was pre­ma­ture and in­ac­cu­rate.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue on Mon­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, said, that al­though he does not have an over­sight role over the op­er­a­tions of the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, he would in­ves­ti­gate the cur­ren­cy as­pect of the mat­ter in­volv­ing the state-owned ho­tel.

In a post on a so­cial me­dia plat­form, Im­bert not­ed, "The Hy­att re­cent­ly an­nounced a con­tentious de­ci­sion to stop ac­cept­ing TT-dol­lar cash, while ac­cept­ing US-dol­lar and ster­ling cash, which it quick­ly re­scind­ed. As cor­po­ra­tion sole, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has no over­sight over the op­er­a­tions of the Hy­att but will in­ves­ti­gate the cur­ren­cy as­pect of the mat­ter."

On Sun­day, speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence, Op­po­si­tion chief whip David Lee called on Im­bert "who is re­spon­si­ble for that Hy­att ho­tel, to come clean with this na­tion to tell us why Hy­att would want to charge the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go...in US dol­lars."

The 428-room Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad on Wright­son Rd in Port-of-Spain is owned by Ude­cott, a prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny that is 100 per cent owned by the Gov­ern­ment. The com­pa­ny falls un­der the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. The ho­tel is man­aged by the Hy­att group.

 The 1973 Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (In­cor­po­ra­tion) Act states, "The Min­is­ter for the time be­ing shall be a cor­po­ra­tion sole by the name of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and all prop­er­ty trans­ferred to and vest­ed in the Min­is­ter by this Act or oth­er­wise ac­quired by the Min­is­ter shall be held in trust for the State."

Mean­while, speak­ing on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew on Mon­day, for­mer par­lia­men­tar­i­an Dr Fuad Khan called on the Gov­ern­ment to abol­ish the coun­try's Ex­change Con­trol Act, which re­stricts the buy­ing, sell­ing, bor­row­ing, or lend­ing of any for­eign cur­ren­cy to deal­ers who are au­tho­rised by the Cen­tral Bank.