An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr. Alvin Hi­laire said there is an im­bal­ance in this coun­try's for­eign ex­change mar­ket, but the bank is do­ing its best to meet the de­mands.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the T&T Stock Ex­change Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day, Hi­laire said while there is an im­bal­ance in this coun­try's for­eign ex­change mar­ket, it is nei­ther new nor has it been ex­ac­er­bat­ed.

“What we have been do­ing to keep calm in the mar­ket is to sell ap­prox­i­mate­ly about US$50 mil­lion every two weeks which is not triv­ial. This year we sold over US$1 bil­lion on the mar­ket.

“We al­so sup­ple­ment that by pro­vid­ing a liq­uid­i­ty guar­an­tee fa­cil­i­ty to the com­mer­cial banks. So, in oth­er words, when the banks are ex­tend­ing them­selves a lot in trad­ing, they can get a spe­cial amount, with­in the lim­its of the cen­tral bank. Last year, it was about US$92 mil­lion that banks got ex­tra in­ter­ven­tion from the Cen­tral Bank and this year so far it is about US$75 mil­lion. This year we have about US$ in in­ter­ven­tion. We are talk­ing about 100 mil­lion per month," the gov­er­nor ex­plained.

Over the past few days, there have been con­cerns ex­pressed by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that they are un­able to bring in goods due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change, which some busi­ness­men are say­ing can lead to pos­si­ble food short­ages.

Hi­laire in­di­cat­ed that while he has heard about this, there is no ev­i­dence thus far about a short­age of food.

Asked about the small and medi­um-size busi­ness­es ex­press­ing con­cern about the lack of forex, which can lead to a clo­sure of their busi­ness­es, the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor said, “I have heard that, and it would be wor­ri­some if it was ac­tu­al­ly to oc­cur. I do not have the ev­i­dence per say, but I have heard that peo­ple are com­plain­ing that they are get­ting dif­fi­cul­ty, and it may have been ex­ac­er­bat­ed over time. As I said we do our part and in­ter­vene, we pro­vide a lot of for­eign cur­ren­cy.”

Asked whether he re­ceived the let­ter from Ram­saran's Dairy Prod­ucts (RDP) own­er and founder Ra­j­nanan Ram­saran about the lack of in­for­ma­tion on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of forex, Hi­lar­ie said he had not seen the let­ter as he was out of the coun­try last week for the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund's (IMF) au­tumn meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton DC.

On Tues­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, in a news re­lease, said that the for­eign ex­change win­dow opened by the Ex­im Bank for whole­sale im­porters of ba­sic foods and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was a tem­po­rary ini­tia­tive.

Im­bert said, "The ad­di­tion of a sec­ond forex win­dow at the Ex­im Bank for es­sen­tial im­ports dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic can­not cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion where, four years lat­er, the Gov­ern­ment is be­ing held li­able by cer­tain pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness­men for the items they or­dered and re­ceived with­out pay­ing for them.

Lat­er on that day, in a so­cial me­dia post, the min­is­ter said, “The Ex­im Bank was es­tab­lished to fa­cil­i­tate the growth and ex­pan­sion of our ex­port and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors; to en­hance our for­eign ex­change earn­ings and cre­ate em­ploy­ment through as­sis­tance to our EX­PORT­ING com­pa­nies and NOT to fa­cil­i­tate whole­salers of im­port­ed fin­ished prod­ucts."