Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert plans to meet with stake­hold­ers this month to dis­cuss for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion.

At yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, Im­bert con­firmed he had al­ready met with banks.

Hours be­fore Im­bert’s state­ment, how­ev­er, Co­or­di­na­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CBRC) Jaishi­ma Lelad­hars­ingh, said he planned to write to the min­is­ter to re­quest a meet­ing if they did not hear from him by month’s end.

“No com­mu­ni­ca­tion has come with a date and time ... We are in the dark as to what is hap­pen­ing at this point in time be­cause no meet­ings are tak­ing place,” Lelad­hars­ingh said in a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion.

At a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence last month, Im­bert spoke about plans to con­sult with stake­hold­ers on chang­ing the method for al­lo­cat­ing for­eign ex­change, which has been op­er­at­ing on an ho­n­our sys­tem for the last 25 years, and cre­at­ing a path to­wards achiev­ing an eq­ui­table ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion.

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day, Lelad­hars­ingh said he was won­der­ing why that meet­ing had not yet tak­en place.

“The Gov­ern­ment can­not op­er­ate in in­su­lar­i­ty giv­en this cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion and forex cri­sis and if some­thing isn’t done it will con­tin­ue to ex­as­per­ate and get worse and worse,” he said.

Lelad­hars­ingh said the min­is­ter has to step in and work with the Cen­tral Bank to en­sure it dis­trib­utes suf­fi­cient for­eign ex­change to cus­tomers, whether they are SMEs or large con­glom­er­ates.

He point­ed out that the pri­vate sec­tor is sup­posed to be the en­gine of growth for this coun­try but there are cer­tain re­quire­ments for them to op­er­ate prop­er­ly.

“The avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change is ab­solute­ly crit­i­cal to that, whether it is to get plants and equip­ment, to bring in lux­u­ry goods or es­sen­tial goods, it is im­por­tant for the avail­abil­i­ty of forex,” he said.

Lelad­hars­ingh is call­ing for the Ex­change Con­trol Act to be up­dat­ed and the ho­n­our sys­tem re­viewed to de­ter­mine if it is work­ing. He added that the in­take of for­eign ex­change was be­com­ing small­er be­cause of the en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty out­put in the coun­try.

“We have oth­er sec­tors that could earn for­eign ex­change but they are un­der­de­vel­oped. No plan is in place for agri­cul­ture, no plan is in place for the ex­pan­sion of the ser­vices sec­tor, man­u­fac­tur­ers are do­ing well, but man­u­fac­tur­ing alone can­not car­ry it so you need to de­vel­op oth­er sec­tors of the econ­o­my to earn for­eign ex­change,” Lelad­hars­ingh said, adding that it is a dis­tri­b­u­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion prob­lem.

Al­so con­tact­ed ear­li­er yes­ter­day, East­ern Busi­ness and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (EBMA) pres­i­dent Ri­car­do Mo­hammed said while Im­bert did not set an of­fi­cial date, busi­ness cham­bers will be ready “if he calls the meet­ing in the morn­ing.”

“We are putting things to­geth­er in prepa­ra­tion,” he said.

Mo­hammed said busi­ness­es have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing forex short­age for years now but 2024 has been the worst. He an­tic­i­pates short­ages in dif­fer­ent sec­tors con­tin­u­ing in­to ear­ly 2025.

“At the end of the day, our for­eign sup­pli­ers can­not send us goods on cred­it with the hope that if we get forex, we get paid, so we need to have a sure sys­tem in place and this meet­ing should have hap­pened a long time ago to ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

Mo­hammed said the busi­ness groups are con­cerned and dis­heart­ened at the for­eign ex­change woes.

“I think the sit­u­a­tion is we can­not give all our US dol­lars or 90 per cent of our US dol­lars to less than five per cent of the ma­jor con­glom­er­at­ed or big busi­ness­es,” he said.

He said small and medi­um busi­ness­es look for­ward to Christ­mas sales prof­its dur­ing the sea­son and tend to push them to af­ter Car­ni­val. How­ev­er, an ex­pect­ed sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in sales may be dif­fi­cult for many busi­ness own­ers.

Mo­hammed said the busi­ness sec­tor is fed up and at a point of cri­sis.