An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Au­to­mo­bile Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Visham Bab­wah, yes­ter­day called for an in­de­pen­dent body to deal with the on­go­ing short­age of for­eign ex­change, as he said some sort of in­ter­ven­tion and clar­i­ty is need­ed.  

“Be­cause if we can­not op­er­ate our busi­ness and pay our wages, then we would have to shut down.  I mean, a lot of peo­ple have gone out of busi­ness, and we are fac­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges. The gov­ern­ment must take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this,” Bab­wah said.

Bab­wah said many for­eign used car deal­ers, who com­prise the or­gan­i­sa­tion, have been forced to turn to the black mar­ket. 

He told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that while oth­er sec­tors have the sup­port of the Ex­im Bank, the for­eign used car deal­ers have to deal with the lit­tle for­eign ex­change be­ing giv­en by the com­mer­cial banks and turn to the black mar­ket, where the US to TT ex­change rate is pegged at US$8.

“The black mar­ket has for­eign ex­change where you have to pay a high­er price. My ques­tions are to the gov­ern­ment, to the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor and the com­mer­cial banks: Where is the black mar­ket get­ting all this amount of forex from? I'm ask­ing a ques­tion here. Is it be­ing en­abled by the com­mer­cial banks? When they get their forex, they send it out to whomev­er, and then it is be­ing sold on the black mar­ket. Be­cause there are times you get a lot of calls that peo­ple have forex to sell US dol­lars,” Bab­wah said.

He al­so took um­brage with an ar­ti­cle in the Sun­day Ex­press, which stat­ed that an in­di­vid­ual or a com­pa­ny is un­able to get forex to im­port pota­to, gar­lic, and onion and the busi­ness pin­point­ed that the for­eign used car in­dus­try can get this large amount of forex to im­port for­eign used cars.

“We have two sec­tors, we have the fran­chise deal­ers who im­port a lot more cars than us. I can't say where they get the US or how many cars they im­port, but there's much more than us. And for an in­di­vid­ual to pin­point the for­eign news car deal­ers with­out be­ing named, I take se­ri­ous of­fense with that be­cause we have been hav­ing se­ri­ous prob­lems ac­quir­ing US dol­lars, just like every­body else,” Bab­wah stressed.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the is­sue was Vashti Guyadeen, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, who said the or­gan­i­sa­tion's mem­bers have al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the ur­gent need to ac­cess for­eign cur­ren­cy.

"Sup­pli­ers are re­fus­ing to send ship­ments with­out re­ceiv­ing pay­ments, which are heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on the avail­abil­i­ty of forex. Our un­der­stand­ing is that the cur­rent list of es­sen­tial items un­der Ex­im Bank still in­cludes items that were on the list dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic some of which were no longer con­sid­ered es­sen­tial."

She not­ed that a let­ter was sent to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert to ad­dress the is­sue and the Cham­ber’s pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj had a brief con­ver­sa­tion with him, in which he ac­knowl­edged the ne­ces­si­ty of the is­sue and men­tioned that a re­vi­sion of the list is in progress.  

In a post on so­cial me­dia over the week­end, Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment cre­at­ed a spe­cial win­dow at the Ex­im Bank to pro­vide US dol­lars for es­sen­tial im­ports, such as food and med­i­cine, and with COVID-19 over, that forex win­dow is be­ing re­viewed.

Mean­while, MP for Oropouche West and the UNC’s shad­ow on the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Dave Tan­coo said that while the un­avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change is un­for­tu­nate, the Op­po­si­tion has been for the longest time warn­ing the coun­try about the sever­i­ty of the forex short­age im­pact, call­ing on Im­bert to make dras­tic in­ter­ven­tions.

“Those busi­ness­es have start­ed to speak out be­cause they are los­ing mon­ey as a re­sult of this un­equal com­pe­ti­tion. Be­yond that, we are al­so in dan­ger of in­vestors clos­ing their doors, adding to the al­ready mas­sive un­em­ploy­ment and un­der­em­ploy­ment lev­els in this coun­try. A re­cent re­port ad­vised that 96.2 per cent of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sta­ple foods are cov­ered by im­ports. As of Au­gust last year, our net for­eign re­serves equat­ed to less than eight months of im­port cov­er. Our Au­gust 2024 po­si­tion has not im­proved. What has the Gov­ern­ment been do­ing to ad­dress this?” asks Tan­coo.