Con­struc­tion com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tive and chair­man of De­sal­cott, Yash­mid Kara­math, is one of three new di­rec­tors of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), the Port-of-Spain-head­quar­tered fi­nan­cial ser­vices group, which is the largest com­pa­ny of its kind in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) re­gion.

The oth­er new RFHL di­rec­tors are Dr Tim­o­thy Af­fon­so, who is an at­tor­ney-at-law and di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights, and Nali­ni Bansee.

Their ap­point­ments took ef­fect from Tues­day, Oc­to­ber 14, ac­cord­ing to a no­tice on the web­site of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change yes­ter­day.

On Mon­day, in de­liv­er­ing the 2026 bud­get, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said, “We have in­stalled new boards at First Cit­i­zens Bank and the Ex­im Bank, and we will move to in­stall a ma­jor­i­ty of di­rec­tors at Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd.”

RFHL is the par­ent com­pa­ny of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, which op­er­ates in T&T.

Tan­coo’s dis­clo­sure of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tions to con­trol the Re­pub­lic board came im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter he said that for­eign ex­change short­ages re­mained a chal­lenge for busi­ness­es, lim­it­ing ac­cess to raw ma­te­ri­als and pro­duc­tion.

“The un­fair prac­tices at ma­jor com­mer­cial banks and the Ex­im Bank have ex­ac­er­bat­ed these short­ages. This ad­min­is­tra­tion will act de­ci­sive­ly to sta­bilise the ex­ter­nal po­si­tion,” Tan­coo said, adding, “By restor­ing en­er­gy pro­duc­tion and cre­at­ing an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness and in­vest­ment, we will in­crease for­eign cur­ren­cy in­flows.”

Asked by What­sApp mes­sage if he could say whether the three new RFHL di­rec­tors were nom­i­nat­ed by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole and/or the NIB, RFHL chair­man Vin­cent Pereira re­ferred a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist to Re­pub­lic’s press of­fice.

The same query was sent to RFHL’s group mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. The em­ploy­ee to whom the email was ad­dressed con­firmed re­ceipt of it, but there was no im­me­di­ate re­sponse from the fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny.

Cor­po­ra­tion Sole (Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Tan­coo) con­trols a ma­jor­i­ty stake in RFHL through the 29.92 per cent of the com­pa­ny owned by Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund, which is 100 per cent owned by the Gov­ern­ment, plus an­oth­er 2.70 per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole. Tan­coo can al­so call on the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board’s 18.80 per cent share­hold­ing of RFHL.