PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher @guardian.co.tt

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

New­ly mint­ed Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young will meet the Bank­ing sec­tor next Tues­day con­cern­ing the al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change to the pub­lic.

The Prime Min­is­ter made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, at which he said new Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Vish­nu Dhan­paul would al­so be a part of the meet­ing.

He said, "I have in­vit­ed the Cen­tral Bank and the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and I'm hop­ing all the CEOs, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers of the banks that op­er­ate in Trinidad and To­ba­go, to meet with my­self, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance right here at White Hall. I in­tend to ad­dress im­me­di­ate­ly, and it will hap­pen on Tues­day next week, the is­sue of for­eign ex­change and forex, and al­lo­ca­tion of forex as one of the first items on my list of pri­or­i­ties."

The Min­is­ter said the meet­ing would take place at 2:30pm, with the me­dia in­vit­ed to wit­ness the start of meet­ing.

"Af­ter that meet­ing, you all will then be told in a trans­par­ent man­ner what was the out­come of that meet­ing. I in­tend to raise at that meet­ing, this is­sue of for­eign ex­change, and how it is that we can ad­dress the for­eign ex­change. The fact is that we have less for­eign ex­change than we used to. That is the fact of life. How­ev­er, how do we look at the al­lo­ca­tion of the for­eign ex­change that is avail­able to us, amongst our cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go," he said.

In the wake of the an­nounce­ment, Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj said, "We are hap­py that the Prime Min­is­ter has called such a meet­ing as it sig­nals that he is plac­ing pri­or­i­ty on the mat­ter."

How­ev­er, she asked that a sim­i­lar meet­ing be held with busi­ness groups as the T&T Cham­ber has long ex­pressed its own con­cerns about the is­sue.

The cham­ber pres­i­dent said the Cham­ber had al­so made pre­vi­ous rec­om­men­da­tions to for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, which she en­cour­aged the Prime Min­is­ter to re­view.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce said it wel­comed the an­nounce­ment. In a state­ment sent by Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj, the group called for greater clar­i­ty con­cern­ing the al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change while ex­press­ing con­cern that SMEs re­mained dis­ad­van­taged by the dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign cur­ren­cy.

The state­ment said. "This lack of over­sight has cre­at­ed an en­vi­ron­ment where banks, re­ceiv­ing forex from the Cen­tral Bank, seem to be pri­ori­tis­ing their own prof­it mar­gins rather than en­sur­ing fair and eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion. Many busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to re­port dif­fi­cul­ties in ac­cess­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy, forc­ing them to re­sort to cost­ly al­ter­na­tives that fur­ther strain their op­er­a­tions."

The call for clar­i­ty was al­so shared by Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Visham Bab­wah, who not­ed that there need­ed to be more trans­paren­cy con­cern­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion by com­mer­cial banks.

"It still comes down to the com­mer­cial banks, when they dis­trib­ute the forex that they re­ceive. This is where a lot of the con­cern comes from. there is where the em­pha­sis should be placed,"

It is not the first time the Gov­ern­ment has pro­posed a meet­ing with stake­hold­ers con­cern­ing the mat­ter. In No­vem­ber, for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced plans to con­sult with stake­hold­ers on chang­ing the method of al­lo­cat­ing for­eign ex­change to ad­dress con­cerns of SMEs.