An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Amid con­tin­u­ing ten­sion about for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, Sco­tia­bank T&T an­nounced yes­ter­day that ef­fec­tive De­cem­ber 1, 2024, it would re­duce the max­i­mum US dol­lar spend­ing lim­it per cal­en­dar month on its cred­it cards un­til fur­ther no­tice.

In a no­tice to its cus­tomers, the lo­cal­ly list­ed, ma­jor­i­ty Cana­di­an owned com­mer­cial bank, said the US dol­lar spend­ing lim­it on the Aero Mas­ter­card Black would be re­duced to US$5,000 and on all oth­er per­son­al cards the lim­it would be re­duced to US$2,000.

"This change in­cludes all trans­ac­tions con­duct­ed out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with all in­ter­na­tion­al on­line trans­ac­tions," Sco­tia­bank said in the no­tice to its cus­tomers.

The bank said that all TT-dol­lar trans­ac­tions con­duct­ed on­line or at lo­cal mer­chants re­main un­af­fect­ed.

Sco­tia­bank al­so em­pha­sised that the Sco­ti­aC­ard Visa deb­it card would no longer of­fer over­seas point-of-sale pur­chas­es not ATM with­drawals.

The de­ci­sion by Sco­tia­bank to cut the US-dol­lar lim­it on its cred­it cards, fol­lows sim­i­lar moves by oth­er lo­cal banks.

In Sep­tem­ber last year, Re­pub­lic Bank ad­vised its cus­tomers that ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 21, 2023 The bank ad­vised on the changes to come in­to ef­fect in a no­tice sent to cus­tomers and post­ed to its web­site. RBL said ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 21, the US-dol­lar lim­it on its cred­it cards would be re­duced down from US$10,000 to US$5,000 per cy­cle.

And on Ju­ly 19, 2024, RBC Roy­al Bank said it would cut its cred­it card hold­ers' month­ly for­eign cur­ren­cy spend­ing lim­it by $10,000 (US$1,500), ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 1

In the bank's no­tice to its cus­tomers, RBC said, "Per­son­al bank­ing and busi­ness bank­ing clients (ex­clud­ing pri­vate bank­ing) month­ly lim­its will be re­duced from TT$51,000 (US$7,500) to TT$41,000 (US$6,000) in forex equiv­a­lent to a max­i­mum of the ac­count's cred­it lim­it, whichev­er is less."

Ram­saran chas­tis­es Im­bert for breach

Mean­while, Ram­saran's Dairy Prod­ucts (RDP) own­er and founder Ra­j­nanan Ram­saran has lashed out at Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert for im­ply­ing that his com­pa­ny could have re­ceived for­eign ex­change from Ex­im Bank.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Ram­saran said this is de­ceit­ful and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing the pub­lic.

He al­so claimed that the min­is­ter may have breached the dairy prod­uct com­pa­ny’s right to pri­va­cy by ask­ing the Ex­im Bank whether or not the com­pa­ny re­quest­ed for­eign ex­change from the bank.

“I call on the Min­is­ter to dis­close whom he con­tact­ed, how he con­duct­ed these in­quiries, and by what au­thor­i­ty he made these dis­clo­sures pub­lic. As a re­sult, I have asked my at­tor­ney at law, Mr. Richard Jag­gasar, to in­ves­ti­gate the le­gal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of this dis­clo­sure and what ac­tion can be tak­en to ad­dress this se­ri­ous breach,” he stressed.

On Tues­day, in a post on X, Im­bert said he checked with Ex­im Bank and based on his in­quiries, was told that Ram­saran has "nev­er ap­plied to the Ex­im Bank for forex."

The min­is­ter's com­ments fol­low let­ters from Ram­saran to the Cen­tral Bank, Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, and the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) on Oc­to­ber 25 about the lack of in­for­ma­tion on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of forex.

He al­so wrote to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for as­sis­tance in this mat­ter.

Ram­saran went on to say in his news re­lease that Im­bert’s so­cial me­dia posts and ob­ses­sion with Ex­im­bank at­tempts to dis­tract from the core is­sue at hand, which is, the in­equitable dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change.

Fur­ther, he said his un­der­stand­ing re­gard­ing the “win­dow” set up at Ex­im Bank dur­ing COVID-19 is that the fa­cil­i­ty on­ly ap­plied to spe­cif­ic es­sen­tial goods and that the fa­cil­i­ty no longer ap­plies.

“The coun­try’s forex is man­aged by the Cen­tral Bank, which dis­trib­utes to au­tho­rised deal­ers in­clud­ing the com­mer­cial banks for sale to the pub­lic.”

The busi­ness­man not­ed that over the last few weeks, there has been an out­cry from the pub­lic and busi­ness own­ers ex­press­ing their strug­gles and frus­tra­tion with ac­cess­ing forex.

He said the Min­istry of Fi­nance must be held ac­count­able and li­able for the short­age and per­ceived in­equitable dis­tri­b­u­tion of forex to the na­tion.