More than nine years ago, on De­cem­ber 4, 2015, for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran was co-host­ed by the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion at the Fifth Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Fo­rum.

At the time, there was sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic dis­qui­et about the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change and con­cern by sev­er­al sec­tors of so­ci­ety that the dis­tri­b­u­tion of most­ly US dol­lars was nei­ther fair nor eq­ui­table.

Per­ceiv­ing he was un­der pres­sure to bring more trans­paren­cy to an is­sue that had been shroud­ed in se­cre­cy, Mr Ram­bar­ran named the top five users of for­eign ex­change by sec­tor and the amount they had used for the pre­vi­ous three years.

In a news re­lease on De­cem­ber 8, 2015, the Cen­tral Bank ac­knowl­edged that Mr Ram­bar­ran had been sub­ject­ed to “wide­spread crit­i­cism” for what was per­ceived by some to be a breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. The bank de­scribed the crit­i­cisms as high­ly prej­u­di­cial and mis­con­ceived, ar­gu­ing that it had weighed a va­ri­ety of com­pet­ing in­ter­ests, in­clud­ing “the pub­lic’s right to be du­ly in­formed of the use of a lim­it­ed na­tion­al fi­nan­cial re­source, against pri­vate sec­tor in­ter­ests, de­sirous of pri­va­cy in such mat­ters.”

About two weeks lat­er, on Christ­mas Eve, Mr Ram­bar­ran’s po­si­tion as gov­er­nor was re­voked by the then-act­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, who took the ac­tion based on ad­vice from the Cab­i­net, which act­ed on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Min­ster of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert.

On Tues­day, T&T’s Court of Ap­peal up­held, to a large part, the judg­ment of High Court judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad de­liv­ered in June 2022, that the de­ci­sion to re­voke Mr Ram­bar­ran’s ap­point­ment was un­fair and a breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­tec­tion of the law.

Jus­tice of Ap­peal Nolan Bereaux, in the ma­jor­i­ty judg­ment, said the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance had a du­ty to act fair­ly in deal­ing with Mr Ram­bar­ran.

“Any­thing less ren­dered the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate un­fair, il­le­gal, null, void and of no ef­fect. That du­ty was plain­ly not dis­charged,” Jus­tice Bereaux said then.

The two Court of Ap­peal judg­ments in the mat­ter of Jwala Ram­bar­ran v the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of T&T come at a time when the dis­qui­et over the dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change is to­day even more acute than it was in De­cem­ber 2015.

At the heart of the is­sue, then and now, is Mr Im­bert. Af­ter meet­ings with the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce and the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss ways and means of mak­ing for­eign ex­change avail­able to lo­cal small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs), Mr Im­bert is­sued a news re­lease on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2023, in which he said “it is ex­pect­ed that a mean­ing­ful so­lu­tion to the chal­lenges faced by SMEs in ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change can be de­vel­oped and im­ple­ment­ed over the next six months.”

Sev­en­teen months lat­er, the coun­try is still wait­ing for the “mean­ing­ful so­lu­tion” to the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion.

And on­ly last month, the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce is­sued a re­port en­ti­tled “Chal­lenges in Ac­cess­ing For­eign Ex­change: Busi­ness In­sights,” in which 111 com­pa­nies were sur­veyed, in­di­cat­ing that 62.2 per cent of re­spon­dents faced de­lays in pay­ing sup­pli­ers and 69 per cent iden­ti­fied favouritism in for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion as be­ing a se­ri­ous con­cern.

It is unimag­in­able that the Min­istry of Fi­nance, along with the Cen­tral Bank, are not able to de­vise a for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem that is more eq­ui­table and does not en­tail the slow de­ple­tion of T&T’s for­eign re­serves and the in­crease of its for­eign debt.