Renu­ka Singh

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran has been fired.The T&T Guardian con­firmed that Ram­bar­ran was dis­missed by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day.

Word of this un­prece­dent­ed dis­missal came late last night, but on­ly one day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that a Gov­ern­ment "ought to have con­fi­dence" in any Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor. That com­ment and his re­fusal to give any ground to Ram­bar­ran made clear that he did not have any con­fi­dence in the Gov­er­nor.

Ram­bar­ran's dis­missal comes af­ter a se­ries of ac­tions that left him in an "un­ten­able" sit­u­a­tion, ac­cord­ing to Row­ley.Just two weeks ago, Row­ley said that Ram­bar­ran was ef­fec­tive­ly cre­at­ing prob­lems for him­self by his ac­tions dur­ing his time as gov­er­nor. In a sting­ing state­ment to the me­dia, Row­ley had then de­scribed Ram­bar­ran ac­tions as reck­less and il­le­gal.

Row­ley's harsh cri­tique came af­ter a se­ries of mis­steps by Ram­bar­ran, which brought him in­to con­flict with Im­bert. Ear­li­er in De­cem­ber, Im­bert crit­i­cised Ram­bar­ran for an­nounc­ing that the coun­try was in a re­ces­sion with­out first con­sult­ing with him. One week lat­er, Ram­bar­ran was again chas­tised for pub­licly re­veal­ing the names of the biggest for­eign ex­change users in the coun­try.

Adding to the sense of a Gov­er­nor em­bat­tled and un­der sev­er pres­sure to keep his job, was Massy con­glom­er­ate's sig­nalling its in­ten­tion to take le­gal ac­tion against him for that al­leged breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

While Ram­bar­ran en­joyed sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion and even gained sup­port in the form of an on­line pe­ti­tion to keep him in of­fice, his con­tin­ued clash­es with the Gov­ern­ment made his po­si­tion ir­re­triev­able.Ram­bar­ran did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­turn calls to his mo­bile phone.

The T&T Guardian was in­formed that deputy Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Alvin Hi­laire will re­place him for a five year term.