Gail Alexan­der

The Gov­ern­ment must de­clare its rea­sons if it wants to fire the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor says for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Con­rad Enill.

He added that the gov­er­nor and the Gov­ern­ment can­not be at log­ger­heads on the di­rec­tion of the econ­o­my. "One has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of fis­cal pol­i­cy and the oth­er man­ages mon­e­tary pol­i­cy. So the min­is­ter and gov­er­nor must co-ex­ist to deal with the econ­o­my's prob­lems and tell the pub­lic what is the cor­rect sit­u­a­tion and what pol­i­cy choic­es they're go­ing to pur­sue on that ba­sis."

He said the gov­er­nor has lee­way in terms of how he per­forms his job, "And it's not un­com­mon for dif­fer­ences to oc­cur be­tween the gov­er­nor and Fi­nance Min­is­ter."Enill said Jwala Ram­bar­ran had sim­ply re­port­ed da­ta that he has, but whether that was a ba­sis to fire him, Enill couldn't say since he said he didn't have all the facts.

On claims Ram­bar­ran broke the law in list­ing the largest forex con­sumers, Enill said if the Gov­ern­ment had been asked in Par­lia­ment to state who the biggest forex con­sumers are, min­is­ters would have had to an­swer.

On whether T&T is in a re­ces­sion, Enill said there was no ques­tion that T&T is "in a dif­fer­ent place."He said the gov­er­nor and gov­ern­ment should be ad­dress­ing ques­tions by the pub­lic to guide them on fi­nan­cial mat­ters "as ba­sic as if peo­ple had to bor­row mon­ey to play mas for Car­ni­val, whether they should do so. In this pe­ri­od, they shouldn't."

For­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne has said, "If there are is­sues be­tween the gov­er­nor and min­is­ter, sort it out pri­vate­ly. Not pub­licly, lest you un­der­mine the in­sti­tu­tion of the Bank, desta­bilise T&T's smooth run­ning and send neg­a­tive sig­nals to the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket."

For­mer cen­tral bank gov­er­nor Win­ston Dook­er­an and for­mer PP fi­nance min­is­ter said his un­der­stand­ing of the act in­di­cat­ed there wasn't any le­gal ar­gu­ment on the re­moval of a CB gov­er­nor that would ap­ply to Ram­bar­ran.

"This ap­pears to be a mat­ter of pol­i­tics rather than laws. But I do not think the pub­lic dis­play in which this has been han­dled can boost con­fi­dence in the sys­tem; han­dling a mat­ter as big as this in this way can't in­still con­fi­dence,"

"There are al­ways is­sues be­tween cen­tral bank gov­er­nors and fi­nance min­is­ters, but there's a dig­ni­ty in how it is to be han­dled and dealt with on fun­da­men­tal dis­agree­ment of pol­i­cy–not this kind of tit for tat. It is un­for­tu­nate to see this." Dook­er­an said when he was fi­nance min­is­ter, then-CB gov­er­nor Ewart Williams had made state­ments about re­ces­sion and as fi­nance min­is­ter, Dook­er­an had cho­sen to ig­nore any pub­lic fight in a bid to build con­fi­dence in the sys­tem.

Dook­er­an said a num­ber of mat­ters were raised about Ram­bar­ran and each had to be dealt with sep­a­rate­ly.He said the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion re­mind­ed him of the is­sue con­cern­ing for­mer chief jus­tice Sat Shar­ma, whom the Man­ning PNM gov­ern­ment un­suc­cess­ful­ly at­tempt­ed to im­peach.

Dook­er­an said the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor doesn't have to "re­port" to the min­is­ter since there are mech­a­nisms via which both work to­geth­er. He said the CB is in­de­pen­dent. "There's a big is­sue about that but the Bank is sup­posed to be in­de­pen­dent of po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence. Dur­ing my tenure there was a sur­vey on trust­ed in­sti­tu­tions and main­tain­ing that trust re­quires in­de­pen­dence. If you deal with it in nar­row po­lit­i­cal terms, you de­stroy that trust."

GROUNDS FOR TER­MI­NA­TION

�2 Be­ing of un­sound mind/in­ca­pable of do­ing du­ties.

�2 Is con­vict­ed/sen­tenced to jail

�2 Con­vict­ed of any of­fences in­volv­ing dis­hon­esty

�2 Guilty of mis­con­duct in re­la­tion to du­ties.

�2 Is ab­sent, ex­cept leave if grant­ed by the board from all Board meet­ings, from all board meet­ings in two con­sec­u­tive months or any three months in a year.

�2 Fails to com­ply with sec­tion 16.1 (re­gard­ing de­c­la­ra­tion of in­ter­est.)

�2 Con­tra­venes any pro­vi­sion of any pre­scribed code of ethics.

�2 Be­comes dis­qual­i­fied for of­fice due to sec­tion 9 (re per­sons who are state/THA/cor­po­ra­tion of­fice hold­ers, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.)

�2 Fails to car­ry out du­ties/func­tions con­ferred on him/her un­der the act.