Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day the de­ci­sion to have a tax amnesty un­til the end of the year is re­lat­ed to the eco­nom­ic fall­out caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Amid re­ports that many have turned to the black mar­ket to pur­chase for­eign ex­change, the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day list­ed the au­tho­rised deal­ers of for­eign ex­change in the coun­try.

The CEO of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change, Eva Mitchell, is en­cour­ag­ing lo­cal busi­ness­es and com­pa­nies to adopt the up­dat­ed T&T Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance Code, which she be­lieves will lead to bet­ter busi­ness prac­tices.

The for­eign ex­change crunch is get­ting worse by the week and many busi­ness­es have had to turn to the black mar­ket.

It is most­ly “gloom and doom” this Christ­mas for many mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized (MSMEs) busi­ness­es, as the most re­cent cut in forex avail­abil­i­ty by RBC to its cred­it card hold­ers will mean these en­ti­ties will ei­ther be forced to close up shop or lim­it the num­ber of items they will be of­fer­ing this sea­son.

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud says the on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al at the port of Port-of-Spain is ex­ac­er­bat­ing T&T’s for­eign ex­change prob­lem.

While some im­porters are call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to in­ter­vene and re­lease for­eign ex­change from T&T’s for­eign re­serves, econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James says the min­is­ter’s hands how­ev­er, may well be tied, based on the gov­ern­ment’s eco­nom­ic man­age­ment strat­e­gy.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon is not en­tire­ly con­vinced that the 50 per cent in­crease in the use of cred­it cards in the last five years is the main cause of the for­eign ex­change short­ages that T&T is en­dur­ing at this time.

De­spite re­port­ing an af­ter-tax prof­it of $82.8 mil­lion for the nine-month pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, Trinidad and To­ba­go NGL Lim­it­ed is still un­able to pay share­hold­ers in US dol­lars.

Unilever Caribbean Ltd (UCL) yes­ter­day re­port­ed unau­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­its of $19.38 mil­lion for the first nine months of its fi­nan­cial year, a 46 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $13.27 mil­lion the com­pa­ny earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe has de­clared the or­gan­i­sa­tion “open for busi­ness.”

One of the ques­tions that was asked of Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, at his vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence last week Tues­day, was whether it was sus­tain­able for the Cen­tral Bank to con­tin­ue sell­ing about US$1.2 bil­lion (US$100 mil­lion a month) of T&T’s for­eign re­serves to the au­tho­rised deal­ers of forex to ad­dress the deficit be­tween the de­mand for, and the sup­ply of forex.