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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves:

PM pledges to ‘sort’ out Vincentian forex issue

by

357 days ago
20240305

Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gon­salves, says he has re­ceived a promise from his T&T coun­ter­part, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, that the sit­u­a­tion of Vin­cent­ian busi­ness­es and farm­ers who sell agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce to Port-of-Spain be­ing un­able to pur­chase East­ern Caribbean dol­lars in Port of Spain will be ad­dressed soon.

Gon­salves said that Row­ley gave the re-as­sur­ance on the side­lines of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) sum­mit held in George­town Guyana last week.

“I raised the mat­ter again with the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and gave him again a copy of the let­ter that I had sent to him,” Gon­salves said on the state-owned NBC ra­dio fol­low­ing his re­turn from George­town.

“And he said that be­fore he left Guyana, he was go­ing to in­form the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (Colm Im­bert) to sort out this mat­ter with the Cen­tral Bank of T&T,” Gon­salves said.

The Vin­cent­ian prime min­is­ter said he took to the heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ing copies of a De­cem­ber 2023 let­ter he had sent to Row­ley, just in case the is­sue was raised for­mal­ly at the Cari­com sum­mit.

“But I had a one on one with … Kei­th Row­ley, my brethren, and he said, ‘I’ll sort this out, Ralph.’ So, I got that as­sur­ance. I’m re­ly­ing on his as­sur­ance. I can’t take that as­sur­ance to the bank. But I’m re­ly­ing on it be­cause I think he will do what he says.”

Traders in agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce across the re­gion, re­ferred to in St Vin­cent as “traf­fick­ers”, have faced chal­lenges for years con­vert­ing the T&T cur­ren­cy, in which they trade here to the East­ern Caribbean dol­lar.

While var­i­ous mea­sures have been put in place, how­ev­er from time-to-time the sys­tem col­laps­es with­out warn­ing.

Vin­cent­ian op­po­si­tion leg­is­la­tor, Is­rael Bruce, raised the is­sue in Par­lia­ment last month, not­ing that in the bud­get ad­dress in Jan­u­ary, Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Camil­lo Gon­salves had said that the arrange­ment which had been fash­ioned among the Cen­tral Bank of T&T, the East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank (EC­CB) and the Bank of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (BoSVG) had been “peremp­to­ri­ly ter­mi­nat­ed by the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad & To­ba­go”.

Bruce not­ed that the fi­nance min­is­ter had said that the prime min­is­ter would have ad­dressed the mat­ter ful­ly.

Gon­salves con­firmed that he had writ­ten to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley on De­cem­ber 8, 2023 con­cern­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of the arrange­ment with the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He said there had been at Kingstown’s re­quest and in­volv­ing the CBTT and the EC­CB, a so­lu­tion pi­lot­ed with BoSVG in No­vem­ber 2018 to fa­cil­i­tate Vin­cent­ian traf­fick­ers up to TT$1.5 mil­lion (One TT dol­lar=US$0.16 cents) per month.

“On No­vem­ber 22, 2023, the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­formed the East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank that the arrange­ments to as­sist small traders from our coun­try will cease on De­cem­ber 31, 2023 and will not be re­newed.”

Gon­salves quot­ed sec­tions of his let­ter to Row­ley, say­ing he was “ab­solute­ly shocked” and point­ing out that St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines has “a sub­stan­tial trade im­bal­ance” with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“St Vin­cent and Grenadines pays ex­porters from Trinidad and To­ba­go in hard cur­ren­cy for its im­ports. Im­ports from Trinidad and To­ba­go to St Vin­cent and Grenadines run in ex­cess of US$70 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly,” Gon­salves said in the let­ter.

“I feel sure that you’re not aware of this re­cent in­jus­tice to the small traders of St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines. In fact, the ex­port from St. Vin­cent and Grenadines to Trinidad and To­ba­go pri­or to the has­sles by the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2018 amount­ed to US$10 mil­lion,” he wrote.

Gon­salves said he ex­plained to Row­ley that “the dif­fi­cul­ties by these small traders in con­duct­ing for­eign ex­change trans­ac­tions out of Trinidad and To­ba­go have dri­ven most of these traders from the mar­ket­place.

They have sim­ply be­come fed up and ex­haust­ed by the ridicu­lous has­sles.

“Now, the life­line of a pal­try $1.5 mil­lion per month is be­ing caused by an un­con­scionable Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The prime min­is­ter told par­lia­ment that he used “fair­ly firm and ro­bust lan­guage” in the let­ter in which he fur­ther told Row­ley, “as you are un­doubt­ed­ly aware, I have long held the view that the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my can­not pre­vail, if its mem­ber coun­tries re­main or be­come un­equal­ly yoked.

“I’m ap­peal­ing to you to right this egre­gious wrong done to the small traders of St. Vin­cent and Grenadines,” Gon­salves wrote. (CMC)


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