Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has re­newed the con­tract of Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire for an­oth­er term. Hi­laire’s con­tract would have come to an end this week.

It will be Hi­laire’s third term as Gov­er­nor. He has served at the or­gan­i­sa­tion for the past eight years, but this is his sec­ond three-year term.

Hi­laire, then a deputy gov­er­nor, was first ap­point­ed for a five-year term fol­low­ing the fir­ing of for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran on De­cem­ber 23, 2015.

The ca­reer econ­o­mist had his two ap­point­ments to the post played out in the pub­lic do­main—in 2015, he was ap­point­ed Gov­er­nor af­ter Ram­bar­ran was fired—a pe­ri­od which he has de­scribed as ‘trau­mat­ic’ for the bank as it was the first time that had hap­pened, and in De­cem­ber 2020, he was re-ap­point­ed af­ter the Gov­ern­ment changed the years of the term re­duc­ing it from five to three years.

In an in­ter­view in 2020, he re­called that it was Ram­bar­ran who had first ap­proached him to be a deputy gov­er­nor un­der his term and while re­luc­tant then, he was guid­ed by the ad­vice of an­oth­er for­mer gov­er­nor, Ewart Williams, who said when your coun­try asks you to serve, you must.

He had then opined that the ap­point­ments to the Cen­tral Bank’s top of­fices should be vet­ted by the pub­lic, per­haps through Par­lia­ment, to en­sure greater ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“Cen­tral banks are very in­ter­est­ing crea­tures, they are set up by law, and they have a very spe­cif­ic man­date. In or­der to do that man­date, they need to have cer­tain pow­ers, but they al­so need to be ac­count­able. So that is what that is what guides us, we are guid­ed by leg­is­la­tion. And they are guid­ed al­so by prin­ci­ples of ethics, le­gal­i­ty, and pro­fes­sion­al­ism. So that’s how we op­er­ate,” he had said.

“So in terms of in­de­pen­dence, I think we be­lieve that Cen­tral Bank in­de­pen­dence is im­por­tant. In our view, I think most of the world is mov­ing to­wards greater Cen­tral Bank in­de­pen­dence. I think in Trinidad To­ba­go, we may be head­ing in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion and I think we need to prob­a­bly step back and say, maybe have a na­tion­al de­bate, to re­set, be­cause it is im­por­tant for a cen­tral bank, to have the ca­pac­i­ty to car­ry out this job, but al­so to be ac­count­able.”

Hi­laire said, “When you’re choos­ing the top po­si­tions, like in some coun­tries, the pub­lic, the par­lia­ment, the na­tion should in a sense, get in­volved with this guy or girl com­ing in, to be in­formed be­cause it’s a se­ri­ous choice. So ac­count­abil­i­ty means trans­paren­cy, that they’re able to ex­plain what they’re do­ing clear­ly and on de­mand. And reg­u­lar­ly. So in many coun­tries, they ap­pear be­fore what­ev­er par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis and say what is hap­pen­ing with mon­e­tary pol­i­cy, ex­plain, quar­rel, that it is part of their job. So trans­paren­cy is im­por­tant and ac­count­abil­i­ty. And it’s some­thing that we take very se­ri­ous­ly.”

Un­der his tenure, the Cen­tral Bank ex­e­cut­ed the suc­cess­ful de­mon­eti­sa­tion of the $100 bill and now all the oth­er bills–dur­ing the pan­dem­ic–and he has been fo­cused on in­creas­ing fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and ad­dress­ing dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies with a view to hav­ing greater fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion. This year, he asked the coun­try’s com­mer­cial banks to re­duce the bu­reau­cra­cy when it comes to cus­tomers open­ing ac­counts.

Mean­while, his crit­ics have ar­gued that he is a pup­pet of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.