The Cen­tral Bank said yes­ter­day that it is about to im­ple­ment mea­sures that are ex­pect­ed to “pro­vide mean­ing­ful re­lief” on the long-stand­ing is­sue of the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change in the near to medi­um term.

The com­mit­ment of the Cen­tral Bank came af­ter its Gov­er­nor, Lar­ry Howai, along with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Kennedy Swarats­ingh and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Roodal Mooni­lal, met yes­ter­day with key stake­hold­ers in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The meet­ing was held at the Cen­tral Bank’s con­fer­ence fa­cil­i­ties and cen­tred on mea­sures to ad­dress on­go­ing for­eign ex­change (forex) chal­lenges.

In a news re­lease, the Cen­tral Bank said the meet­ing was con­struc­tive and col­lab­o­ra­tive, “with par­tic­i­pants ex­press­ing sup­port for a se­ries of near-term ini­tia­tives to im­prove for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

The dis­cus­sions fo­cused on prac­ti­cal ac­tions to en­hance the ef­fi­cien­cy of forex al­lo­ca­tion and sup­port ef­forts to ease cur­rent mar­ket con­straints, the Cen­tral Bank said.

It not­ed that en­er­gy sec­tor con­ver­sions re­mained the pri­ma­ry source of for­eign ex­change in­flows, ac­count­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 to 75 per cent of to­tal mar­ket con­ver­sions.

How­ev­er, it said over the past decade, for­eign ex­change sales by en­er­gy com­pa­nies de­clined by an es­ti­mat­ed US$1.2 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing the sup­ply avail­able to the do­mes­tic econ­o­my. At the same time, de­mand for for­eign ex­change con­tin­ues to out­pace sup­ply, the Cen­tral Bank said.

The in­sti­tu­tion point­ed out that while im­prove­ments are ex­pect­ed in the sup­ply of lo­cal oil and gas from late 2027, the Cen­tral Bank, work­ing in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the line Min­istries, recog­nis­es the need for tar­get­ed, short-term in­ter­ven­tions.

“The Cen­tral Bank reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to work­ing close­ly with the en­er­gy sec­tor and oth­er stake­hold­ers to strength­en for­eign ex­change man­age­ment. Al­though such in­ter­ven­tions can­not, on their own, in­crease over­all forex sup­ply, the ini­tia­tives be­ing put in place are ex­pect­ed to im­prove dis­tri­b­u­tion out­comes and pro­vide mean­ing­ful re­lief in the near to medi­um term.”

Gov­er­nor Howai ex­pressed op­ti­mism that con­tin­ued co­or­di­na­tion among stake­hold­ers will sup­port more ef­fec­tive man­age­ment of the for­eign ex­change mar­ket and con­tribute to greater sta­bil­i­ty in the pe­ri­od ahead.

Asked to re­spond to feed­back from the meet­ing that cer­tain en­er­gy com­pa­nies were put on no­tice that they would be re­quired to sell their for­eign ex­change to the Cen­tral Bank and not to com­mer­cial banks, Howai told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that there may have been a mis­un­der­stand­ing.

“We ad­vised that there was more than one ap­proach oth­er than re­quir­ing them to sell to the Cen­tral Bank,” said Howai.