The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma) says in­creased gov­ern­ment spend­ing has been caus­ing pe­ri­od­ic short­ages of for­eign ex­change for sev­er­al years.In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the group said in 2000 gov­ern­ment spend­ing ac­cel­er­at­ed from $13 bil­lion and that fig­ure had tripled to $30 bil­lion by 2004."Ma­jor de­mands for for­eign ex­change in the form of na­tion­al projects of gar­gan­tu­an size and fol­low-on con­sumer de­mand now seem to have reached a crescen­do," Do­ma said.

It added that the sit­u­a­tion is caus­ing a pro­found "snow­ball" ef­fect by ex­cit­ing de­mand that would not have arisen but for fear of a con­tin­ued short­age. Do­ma al­so said the cur­rent chron­ic short­age of for­eign ex­change is de­flat­ing con­fi­dence among the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.The state­ment con­tin­ued: "Re­cent an­nounce­ments re­gard­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of an auc­tion sys­tem and the al­lot­ment of for­eign ex­change to many new deal­ers do not pro­vide any ad­e­quate way for­ward nor does the an­nounce­ment of in­jec­tion of an­oth­er US$200 mil­lion of for­eign ex­change."We re­spect­ful­ly wish to point out that in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing a new auc­tion pro­to­col are use­less un­less we are told what changes will be im­me­di­ate­ly made to re­lieve the chron­ic short­age that be­gan more than five months ago."If the in­tro­duc­tion of a new sys­tem has caused scarci­ty and a lack of con­fi­dence, changes should be made and this is the in­for­ma­tion that we need."

Do­ma said it has been re­li­ably in­formed that the wait­ing list of un­paid for­eign bills ex­ceeds the new in­jec­tion of US$200 mil­lion with­in just two or three in­dus­tries."In the fi­nal analy­sis, the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change is a vi­tal sta­tis­tic of a coun­try's eco­nom­ic da­ta. It is one of those stub­born in­di­ca­tors that speaks for it­self and can­not be al­tered by sym­po­siums, con­sul­ta­tions or press an­nounce­ments. We ei­ther have the for­eign ex­change or we do not!" the group said."In our case, as the short­ages be­come more and more pro­tract­ed we are be­ing re­mind­ed of the need for an ur­gent dis­cus­sion of macro-eco­nom­ic poli­cies."These pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions will have to in­clude some sen­si­ble talk about gov­ern­ment spend­ing, na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties and the choice of projects and whether or not the Trinidad and To­ba­go cur­ren­cy is not over­val­ued at this time."