GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

In 2025, the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) ex­pe­ri­enced a ma­jor shift in its ad­min­is­tra­tive and fis­cal di­rec­tion, large­ly dri­ven by a change in lead­er­ship dur­ing a pe­ri­od of com­plex eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

This tran­si­tion reached a turn­ing point on June 24, 2025, when Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, act­ing on the ad­vice of the Cab­i­net led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, re­voked the ap­point­ment of Dr Alvin Hi­laire as Gov­er­nor.

Hi­laire, a ca­reer econ­o­mist who had held the po­si­tion since 2015 and was pre­vi­ous­ly re­newed for two terms, saw his tenure cut short more than a year be­fore its sched­uled ex­pi­ra­tion in De­cem­ber 2026.

Fol­low­ing his dis­missal, Hi­laire ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion to con­test the de­ci­sion, fil­ing for ju­di­cial re­view and seek­ing $9.87 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion.

The le­gal bat­tle raised sig­nif­i­cant ques­tions re­gard­ing the statu­to­ry in­de­pen­dence of the Gov­er­nor and the pro­ce­dur­al re­quire­ments for ter­mi­nat­ing such a high-lev­el ap­point­ment.

The pri­ma­ry point of con­tention lead­ing to the dis­missal in­volved the man­age­ment of the coun­try’s for­eign ex­change re­sources as Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed the Gov­er­nor’s re­fusal to dis­close the iden­ti­ties of the top users of for­eign ex­change in T&T.

In the im­me­di­ate wake of the re­vo­ca­tion, the gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed Lar­ry Howai as the 11th Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, ef­fec­tive June 24, 2025.

A for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance and for­mer CEO of First Cit­i­zens Bank, Howai’s tran­si­tion in­to the role was viewed by the ad­min­is­tra­tion as a move to bet­ter align mon­e­tary, fis­cal and ex­change rate poli­cies. Up­on his ap­point­ment, Howai ac­knowl­edged that ad­dress­ing the for­eign ex­change cri­sis would be a pri­ma­ry pri­or­i­ty for his five-year term, sig­nalling a more col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach be­tween the bank and the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Hi­laire was ini­tial­ly ap­point­ed gov­er­nor for a five-year term on De­cem­ber 23, 2015, fol­low­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of the ap­point­ment of his pre­de­ces­sor, Jwala Ram­bar­ran.

His first term end­ed on De­cem­ber 22, 2020, and he was reap­point­ed to a three-year term ef­fec­tive De­cem­ber 23, 2020.

That reap­point­ment came af­ter an amend­ment was made to the Cen­tral Bank Act that al­lowed for a gov­er­nor’s term to be be­tween three and five years.

Hi­laire’s dis­missal drew par­al­lels to the 2015 ter­mi­na­tion of Ram­bar­ran, who was al­so sacked af­ter he raised con­cerns about the for­eign ex­change mar­ket.

Ram­bar­ran was award­ed $7.5 mil­lion in a wrong­ful dis­missal case against the State.

Up­on as­sum­ing the role of Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor in mid-2025, Howai moved quick­ly to ad­dress the peren­ni­al US dol­lar short­age by pri­ori­tis­ing pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Howai’s me­dia en­gage­ment on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2025, fo­cused on the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion and the forex cri­sis in T&T.

He ad­dressed the me­dia at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um in Port-of-Spain, where he dis­cussed the mea­sures be­ing ac­tive­ly ex­am­ined to ad­dress forex short­ages, par­tic­u­lar­ly the im­pact of geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments on in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty mar­kets, em­pha­sis­ing that a lack of trans­paren­cy in how forex is al­lo­cat­ed of­ten breeds pub­lic frus­tra­tion.

To com­bat this, he pro­posed shar­ing more in­for­ma­tion with the pop­u­la­tion re­gard­ing the flow of re­serves—while still re­spect­ing le­gal con­fi­den­tial­i­ty—to en­sure that the pub­lic un­der­stands the “rules of the game.”

He has been vo­cal about the “sup­ply-side” re­al­i­ty, not­ing that the Cen­tral Bank con­tributes on­ly about 20 per cent of the forex in cir­cu­la­tion, with the re­main­ing 80 per cent com­ing from the pri­vate sec­tor (pri­mar­i­ly oil and gas com­pa­nies).

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant shifts un­der Howai’s lead­er­ship has been the sig­nalling of high­er in­ter­est rates.

He has ar­gued that in­ter­est rates in T&T must rise to in­cen­tivise busi­ness­es to repa­tri­ate their for­eign earn­ings rather than keep­ing them abroad.

By of­fer­ing more com­pet­i­tive lo­cal re­turns, the goal is to in­crease the vol­ume of US dol­lars flow­ing back in­to the do­mes­tic bank­ing sys­tem.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he has sug­gest­ed that the coun­try may need to re-ex­am­ine con­sump­tion pat­terns, point­ing specif­i­cal­ly to the mas­sive growth in cred­it card us­age—which jumped from ap­prox­i­mate­ly US5$765 mil­lion in 2013 to over US$2.3 bil­lion—as a ma­jor drain on avail­able re­serves.

It al­so con­nects the is­sue of ris­ing cred­it card us­age and re­serve strain with the in­tro­duc­tion of Howai’s dig­i­tal agen­da.

A cor­ner­stone is the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a na­tion­al fast pay­ments sys­tem mod­elled af­ter In­dia’s Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI).

In late 2025, Howai em­pha­sised that this plat­form would be a “game-chang­er,” en­abling in­stant, re­al-time per­son-to-per­son (P2P) and per­son-to-mer­chant (P2M) trans­ac­tions via mo­bile phones.

By re­duc­ing the re­liance on tra­di­tion­al, slow­er bank­ing rails, the bank aims to en­hance fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and bring more of the “grey mar­ket” in­to the for­mal fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

Howai has specif­i­cal­ly not­ed that in­te­grat­ing pop­u­lar glob­al dig­i­tal pay­ment apps like Zelle, CashApp, and Ap­ple Pay is a “high-pri­or­i­ty area,” though he has cau­tioned that this re­quires a ro­bust leg­isla­tive frame­work to pre­vent fraud.

By pri­ori­tis­ing both in­no­va­tion in pay­ment plat­forms and ac­count­abil­i­ty in fi­nan­cial gov­er­nance, Howai has sig­nalled a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to mod­ernising the sec­tor—an ap­proach re­flect­ed in the re­cent break­through be­tween the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the Cen­tral Bank.

The long-stand­ing im­passe be­tween the Of­fice of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the Cen­tral Bank was fi­nal­ly re­solved when Howai con­firmed in late Sep­tem­ber that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al has been grant­ed full ac­cess to the elec­tron­ic cheque clear­ing sys­tem and the GoAny­where plat­form.

This fol­lowed an in­ter­ven­tion by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, who ruled that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date to in­spect pub­lic ac­counts over­rides the se­cre­cy pro­vi­sions of the Cen­tral Bank Act.

Je­re­mie em­pha­sised that such over­sight is es­sen­tial to the statu­to­ry man­date and can­not be “frus­trat­ed” by in­ter­nal bank poli­cies.

The con­flict, which dom­i­nat­ed head­lines through­out 2024, reached a boil­ing point fol­low­ing a $2.6 bil­lion un­der­state­ment in the 2023 pub­lic ac­counts.

This er­ror, at­trib­uted to a soft­ware glitch dur­ing the Cen­tral Bank’s tran­si­tion to an au­to­mat­ed cheque-clear­ing sys­tem, led to a break­down in trust be­tween the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al had is­sued a “dis­claimer of opin­ion” on the 2024 na­tion­al ac­counts, cit­ing an in­abil­i­ty to ver­i­fy da­ta due to re­strict­ed ac­cess.

This lack of trans­paren­cy sparked a po­lit­i­cal firestorm, with the op­po­si­tion and the pub­lic de­mand­ing an­swers re­gard­ing the in­tegri­ty of the state’s fi­nan­cial re­port­ing

In Par­lia­ment in June 2025, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar es­ca­lat­ed the mat­ter by for­mal­ly in­struct­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo to in­voke Sec­tion 52 of the Cen­tral Bank Act.

This pow­er al­lowed the min­is­ter to by­pass the bank’s own au­di­tors and man­date an ex­am­i­na­tion by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

The year al­so saw sig­nif­i­cant le­gal res­o­lu­tion as the Privy Coun­cil cleared the way for Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Ram­dass to pur­sue ju­di­cial re­view against the Gov­ern­ment’s at­tempt to in­ves­ti­gate her of­fice.

Mon­e­tary pol­i­cy de­ci­sions

The Cen­tral Bank has cho­sen to main­tain the re­po rate at 3.50 per cent, a lev­el that has re­mained un­changed since March 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

This de­ci­sion re­flect­ed a cau­tious ap­proach to mon­e­tary pol­i­cy, as the in­sti­tu­tion con­tin­ues to bal­ance do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic needs with the broad­er un­cer­tain­ties in the glob­al fi­nan­cial en­vi­ron­ment.

By keep­ing the rate steady, the bank sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to pro­vide sta­bil­i­ty in bor­row­ing costs, while avoid­ing abrupt shifts that could un­set­tle mar­kets or house­holds still ad­just­ing to post-pan­dem­ic con­di­tions.

The rea­son­ing be­hind this de­ci­sion is root­ed in sev­er­al in­ter­con­nect­ed fac­tors. Pol­i­cy­mak­ers have point­ed to the per­sis­tence of glob­al pol­i­cy un­cer­tain­ty, which makes it dif­fi­cult to pre­dict the tra­jec­to­ry of in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est rates, trade flows, and in­vest­ment pat­terns. At the same time, tighter fi­nan­cial con­di­tions world­wide have cre­at­ed chal­lenges for emerg­ing economies, lim­it­ing ac­cess to af­ford­able cred­it and in­creas­ing the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with cap­i­tal out­flows. With­in this con­text, the Cen­tral Bank judged that hold­ing the re­po rate steady is the most pru­dent course of ac­tion, as it helps safe­guard con­fi­dence in the fi­nan­cial sys­tem while avoid­ing un­nec­es­sary volatil­i­ty.