The Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go met with two pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions on Mon­day and yes­ter­day, with the top­ic of for­eign ex­change dom­i­nat­ing the stake­hold­er en­gage­ments.

The Cen­tral Bank host­ed a meet­ing with the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Am­cham T&T) on Mon­day as part of a se­ries of key stake­hold­er en­gage­ments start­ed since Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai’s ap­point­ment in June 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Cen­tral Bank, “The key ar­eas of dis­cus­sion in­clud­ed the man­age­ment of and ac­cess to for­eign ex­change, repa­tri­a­tion of earn­ings, the im­pli­ca­tions of VAT re­turns, ex­pand­ing ex­port-led growth, pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ships, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, and the ex­pan­sion of fin­techs es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness.”

Ac­cord­ing the Mon­day’s re­lease, the Gov­er­nor ac­knowl­edged that Am­cham T&T plays a key role in en­hanc­ing busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness, safe­guard­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and as such, they are a ma­jor stake­hold­er with po­ten­tial to in­flu­ence pos­i­tive change.

“The Cen­tral Bank will con­tin­ue to deep­en its re­la­tion­ship with Am­cham T&T with a view to find­ing cre­ative so­lu­tions to make our­selves glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive.”

Gov­er­nor Howai said, “Con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty and tal­ent of our peo­ple and proven track record in over­com­ing ob­sta­cles, not­ing that strate­gic en­gage­ments such as this one can on­ly re­dound to the ben­e­fit of our coun­try and its cit­i­zens.”

Yes­ter­day, the Cen­tral Bank con­tin­ued its stake­hold­er en­gage­ments with a fo­cussed dis­cus­sion in­volv­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

Gov­er­nor Howai iden­ti­fied the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the meet­ing as get­ting an un­der­stand­ing from the Cham­ber of their per­spec­tives based on an open and can­did ex­change of facts, chal­lenges and po­ten­tial so­lu­tions.

“A key out­come from the ses­sion was the strong en­dorse­ment of the Cen­tral Bank’s per­spec­tives on how we can po­ten­tial­ly do things dif­fer­ent­ly and more trans­par­ent­ly in man­ag­ing and al­lo­cat­ing scarce for­eign ex­change re­serves. The Cham­ber com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the Cen­tral Bank’s ef­forts by ed­u­cat­ing their mem­bers on the ex­ist­ing chal­lenges, the need to op­er­ate dif­fer­ent­ly and to be­come more self-suf­fi­cient.”

Last Thurs­day, the Cen­tral Bank team met with the Con­fed­er­a­tion of the Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers. In the wake of that meet­ing, the Cen­tral Bank said that “for­eign ex­change, in­clud­ing sup­ply-de­mand dy­nam­ics and the out­look for im­prov­ing ac­cess and ef­fi­cien­cy, was a cen­tral top­ic of dis­cus­sion dur­ing the meet­ing.”