The for­eign ex­change is­sue has more to do with in­creas­ing the over­all size of the pie than how it is al­lo­cat­ed. That’s ac­cord­ing to NCB Mer­chant Bank (Trinidad and To­ba­go) (NCBMBTT) chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Mar­li Creese.

Asked about the hot top­ic that is dom­i­nat­ing the lo­cal news head­lines, in a one-on-one in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian last week, Creese said NCBMBTT makes for­eign ex­change avail­able to its clients on an as-need­ed ba­sis, based on their com­mer­cial needs and the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the client and the bank.

He ex­plained that while the forex is tight across the board, the non-bank fnan­cial in­sti­tu­tion and bro­ker-deal­er does its best for its clients,

“The un­der­ly­ing is­sues are sys­temic and there’s very lit­tle that any one fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion can do. The en­tire size of the pie needs to be in­creased. If you look at the struc­ture of our for­eign ex­change flows, the re­al­i­ty is that much of it comes from the en­er­gy sec­tor, the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and ex­ports. It’s re­al­ly what we sell to the out­side world that gen­er­ates for­eign ex­change.”

Creese not­ed that com­ing out of a few years of the COVID-19, the im­pact the glob­al pan­dem­ic would have had on the econ­o­my, in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy prices in­clud­ing nat­ur­al gas and fer­tilis­er, was out of the fi­nan­cial sec­tor’s con­trol as it al­so does not cre­ate or man­u­fac­ture for­eign ex­change.

“It sim­ply re­al­lo­cates it. And that is the lim­i­ta­tion of the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try in that re­gard. We do not gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change,” he out­lined.

On Tues­day the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, in a news re­lease, said it is aware of and “deeply con­cerned” by on­go­ing for­eign ex­change chal­lenges.

BATT not­ed its mem­bers op­er­ate in com­pli­ance with le­gal reg­u­la­tions, Cen­tral Bank (CBTT) poli­cies, and guide­lines re­gard­ing the al­lo­ca­tion of forex.

These in­clude:

1. A fixed-rate for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion pro­vid­ed by the CBTT;

2. An oblig­a­tion, pre­scribed in reg­u­la­tions, for banks to sell for­eign ex­change to the pub­lic at a spec­i­fied spread;

3. A pro­hi­bi­tion on com­mer­cial banks, by reg­u­la­tions set by CBTT, from pur­chas­ing for­eign ex­change above a spec­i­fied rate; and

4. Reg­u­lar dai­ly re­port­ing to the CBTT of forex trans­ac­tions with in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed as pre­scribed by CBTT as a reg­u­la­tor.

BATT added that it recog­nis­es struc­tur­al fac­tors that con­tribute to forex chal­lenges and is com­mit­ted to dis­cus­sions with the Gov­ern­ment and the Cen­tral Bank to de­vel­op an ap­proach that serves the in­ter­ests of all stake­hold­ers.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said there will be con­sul­ta­tions with stake­hold­ers about the cur­rent sys­tem of for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“We are go­ing to talk to the cham­bers of com­merce, TTMA and oth­er in­ter­est groups and ask them if they be­lieve the hon­onur sys­tem which has been in place for the last 25 years, should change in­to a more reg­u­lat­ed and more struc­tured thing. Where­by the Cen­tral Bank will now have cat­e­gories of dis­tri­b­u­tion for for­eign ex­change and I ex­pect that I will be able to com­plete those dis­cus­sions by the end of this year,” Im­bert de­tailed.

Im­bert al­so added that he will be talk­ing to en­er­gy com­pa­nies about pay­ing their tax­es to the coun­try in US dol­lars.

Group gen­er­ates foriegn ex­change

NCBMBTT, which is a sub­sidiary of Ja­maica’s NCB Fi­nan­cial Group, was the un­der­writer of the Er­ic So­lis Mar­ket­ing’s Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer­ing, which opened in Ju­ly this year.

Al­so speak­ing to Busi­ness Guardian on the mat­ter was the So­lis man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Rishi Bad­daloo, who said the forex crunch is af­fect­ing all busi­ness­es.

So­lis is a sub­sidiary of the Of­fice Au­thor­i­ty group and Bad­daloo said be­cause the group op­er­ates dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es that en­ables the com­pa­ny to gen­er­ate US dol­lars.

”We have a large ex­port busi­ness, where we ex­port to 15 plus coun­tries, pri­mar­i­ly in the Eng­lish Caribbean, oc­ca­sion­al­ly, the Dutch and French Caribbean. So that gen­er­ates some US dol­lars for the group. We are al­so man­u­fac­tur­ers,” said Bad­daloo, who is al­so man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Of­fice Au­thor­i­ty.

Asked to elab­o­rate on what the com­pa­ny man­u­fac­tures, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor looked back at the lega­cy of the com­pa­ny, which was Trin­pad, the first pa­per con­vert­er and ex­er­cise book man­u­fac­tur­er in T&T

“Our brand to­day is Schol­ar, which in­cludes note­books, pa­per prod­ucts and so on. Those things are made in T&T. We im­port all of the raw ma­te­ri­als, and we con­vert them, and we make pri­mar­i­ly pa­per-based prod­ucts as one man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness. The oth­er main man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness is print, which is be­spoke man­u­fac­tur­ing.

“Every or­der is cus­tomized. If you take a brochure as an ex­am­ple, this brochure starts its life as a tree with pa­per, where you im­port big rolls or huge sheets. You have to print, you must put ink, there’s art­work. This is a be­spoke man­u­fac­tur­ing prod­uct,” Bad­daloo said.

SO­LIS (Er­ic SO­LIS Mar­ket­ing Ltd), be­came the third Small and Medi­um En­ter­prise (SME) to be list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE)in Sep­tem­ber.

The com­pa­ny’s Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer­ing (IPO) which opened on Ju­ly 16 and closed on Au­gust 9, was over­sub­scribed.

In a Guardian news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment, SO­LIS said 2,750,000 shares were is­sued, re­sult­ing in over 150 first-time in­vestors on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change.

The lead bro­ker was NCB Mer­chant Bank T&T, and the co-bro­kers were Bourse Bro­kers, Caribbean Stock­bro­kers, First Cit­i­zens Bro­ker­age and Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices, JMMB Se­cu­ri­ties T&T, Re­pub­lic Wealth Man­age­ment, Shep­pard Stock­bro­kers and West In­dies Stock­bro­kers.

On its web­site, SO­LIS said its core op­er­a­tions are cen­tered around the sales, rental, and ser­vic­ing of mul­ti­func­tion print­ers, pho­to­copiers, and oth­er busi­ness equip­ment to com­pa­nies pre­dom­i­nant­ly lo­cat­ed in T&T.

The in­dus­try it said en­com­pass­es a struc­ture in which the man­u­fac­tur­ers, pri­mar­i­ly based in Japan or the USA, ap­point au­tho­rised deal­ers on a coun­try or re­gion­al ba­sis to man­age their re­spec­tive ter­ri­to­ries.

“As an au­tho­rized deal­er, SO­LIS has es­tab­lished it­self as a rep­utable rep­re­sen­ta­tive for eight renowned in­ter­na­tion­al brands, in­clud­ing Kon­i­ca Mi­nol­ta, Lex­mark, HP, Riso­graph, Broth­er, Pa­per­cut, Sam­sung and Fel­lowes. Through its com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to mar­ket­ing, sales, rentals, and ser­vic­ing, SO­LIS ef­fec­tive­ly caters to the spe­cif­ic needs of the Trinidad and To­ba­go mar­ket with the equip­ment man­u­fac­tured by these well-known brands,” the web­site shared.