GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (RFHL) pres­i­dent and CEO Nigel Bap­tiste says US cur­ren­cy is the “biggest con­straint” to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T.

Speak­ing at the sign­ing of a part­ner­ship be­tween the bank and the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency (CE­DA) Bap­tiste said the coun­try first has to pro­duce US to con­sume it.

“His­tor­i­cal­ly there re­mains a de­pen­dence on the Gov­ern­ment through the Cen­tral Bank to sup­ply for­eign ex­change to the lo­cal mar­ket. A few years ago Re­pub­lic Bank recog­nised that we need to help our clients be­come a lit­tle bit more self suf­fi­cient.

“That in turn, would help the bank be­cause it would re­duce the de­mand for for­eign ex­change from those clients who are able to gen­er­ate it for them­selves,” Bap­tiste ex­plained on the rea­son for the ven­ture.

More im­por­tant­ly, he added, this would en­able the bank to then sup­ply Forex to those in­volved in the im­port busi­ness who may have dif­fi­cul­ty ob­tain­ing for­eign ex­change.

“So to the ex­tent where we can get our ex­porters grow­ing, gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change and one of the con­di­tions for our work is that they have to bring back a cer­tain per­cent­age of their ex­ports re­ceipts,” Bap­tiste said.

Al­so, he not­ed the ini­tia­tive would in­crease the ex­port po­ten­tial and ca­pac­i­ty of the re­gion’s SMEs and larg­er firms through tar­get­ed sup­port and train­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Bap­tiste a part­ner­ship like this is need­ed more than ever as the “in­her­ent­ly vul­ner­a­ble” Caribbean economies re­main on the path to re­cov­ery af­ter the crip­pling im­pact of COVID-19 and as they aim to stay the course to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and long-term eco­nom­ic growth in a post-pan­dem­ic world.

Fur­ther, Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed’s (RFHL) pres­i­dent and CEO not­ed that ca­pac­i­ty and train­ing will lead to the elim­i­na­tion of tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers to trade that may have im­ped­ed the ex­port readi­ness of some SMEs.

“The part­ner­ship can lead to a much need­ed di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of our trade of­fer­ings as a coun­try es­pe­cial­ly if fo­cus is placed on ar­eas where we can have a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage,” Bap­tiste added.

Dr Damie Sam­my, CE­DA’s Man­ag­er, Com­pet­i­tive­ness and Ex­port Pro­mo­tion who al­so spoke ar­gued that too many economies are fo­cused on a nar­row range of prod­ucts and ser­vices which is not ide­al.

He said CE­DA, which re­cent­ly com­plet­ed its strate­gic plan, is fo­cused on three main pil­lars one of which is ex­port de­vel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion in­clud­ing the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of busi­ness.

“If this pan­dem­ic has taught us any­thing is that we can­not utilise tra­di­tion­al brick and mor­tar busi­ness. We have to look at be­ing more in­no­v­a­tive,” Sam­my ad­vised.

He said the plan al­so en­tails tar­get­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in the Caribbean as well em­pha­sis on ser­vices.