The “pull-back” by the HY­ATT Re­gency man­age­ment re­gard­ing the re­quire­ment for hav­ing all cash pay­ments made in US and oth­er hard cur­ren­cies is in­ter­est­ing. First of all, to have reached so far as hav­ing the in­ten­tion men­tioned on its web­site in­di­cates a think­ing by the man­age­ment; per­haps stran­gled along the line by one of the fi­nan­cial au­thor­i­ties of the State.

It will, how­ev­er, be in­ter­est­ing if the rea­sons were giv­en be­hind what was a clear­ly planned strat­e­gy of the ho­tel be­cause of its de­pen­dence on hard cur­ren­cy to op­er­ate in the glob­al mar­ket­place.

Most as­sured­ly, Hy­att, like oth­er ho­tels of its size and ori­en­ta­tion, de­pends heav­i­ly on im­ports and be­cause of its oth­er in­ter­ac­tions in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­place. Un­der­stand­ably, there­fore, the ho­tel man­age­ment is ap­par­ent­ly seek­ing to get away from pay­ing for­eign dol­lars for prod­ucts and ser­vices and sell­ing them on the lo­cal mar­ket for TT cur­ren­cy, and then fac­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of ac­quir­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy to restart the process of pur­chas­ing in hard cur­ren­cy and sell­ing in lo­cal dol­lars.

The sit­u­a­tion of the Hy­att man­age­ment is a minia­ture ver­sion of the na­tion­al prob­lem; that be­ing hav­ing to pay for its over­whelm­ing ap­petite for in­ter­na­tion­al prod­ucts and ser­vices, while in con­trol of on­ly a few ex­ports to earn what is re­quired to keep up the tastes and habits struc­tured around for­eign con­sump­tion.

The ho­tel man­age­ment, through its think­ing of ac­cept­ing on­ly hard cur­ren­cy cash, must be of the view that be­ing the earn­er of hard cur­ren­cy from over­seas vis­i­tors and hav­ing to pur­chase goods and ser­vices with such cash must think it­self de­serv­ing of pay­ment in US green­backs.

For a num­ber of rea­sons, the fi­nan­cial au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Gov­ern­ment and the Cen­tral Bank, can­not af­ford to al­low in­di­vid­u­als and cor­po­ra­tions to make their own de­ter­mi­na­tion on the right to charge on­ly for­eign cur­ren­cy for their prod­ucts and ser­vices. For one thing, that will open the flood­gates for oth­ers to fol­low suit.

The con­sid­er­a­tions against al­low­ing such to hap­pen are many. Most im­por­tant­ly among them, it will ef­fec­tive­ly rel­e­gate the lo­cal­ly is­sued cur­ren­cy to to­tal ir­rel­e­vance and cause a se­ri­ous frac­tion in the so­cial equal­i­ty (al­ready high) of the so­ci­ety, so that those who do not have ac­cess to US and oth­er forms of in­ter­na­tion­al­ly trad­able dol­lars will not be able to en­joy a din­ner, a night-out, even a short va­ca­tion at a ho­tel owned by the State. If that were al­lowed to hap­pen, where will it all end? It will be an ex­is­ten­tial night­mare for the gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, cit­i­zens and even­tu­al­ly for all of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

All of that and more notwith­stand­ing, say­ing “no” to the Hy­att does not in any way erad­i­cate one ma­jor prob­lem, ar­guably the most chal­leng­ing: the des­per­ate need to broad­en the base of the econ­o­my out­side the en­er­gy sec­tor to earn in­creased quan­ti­ties of for­eign ex­change on a con­sis­tent and pre­dictable ba­sis.

Un­til that need for trans­for­ma­tion from the his­toric na­ture of the econ­o­my can be at­tempt­ed and suc­ceed­ed with on a long-term ba­sis, the side ef­fects will re­main the same.

What can be said of this man­i­fes­ta­tion of the need for for­eign cur­ren­cy earn­ings is that soon enough, it can en­gulf the econ­o­my and so­ci­ety.