Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj has re­ject­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s claim that the in­creased use of cred­it cards is con­tribut­ing to the for­eign ex­change (forex) cri­sis. Ma­haraj ar­gues that busi­ness­es are us­ing cred­it cards as a last re­sort to sur­vive the on­go­ing forex short­age. 

“For many small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs), the forex short­age is a crit­i­cal ob­sta­cle,” Ma­haraj said. “Un­like oth­er Caribbean na­tions, our busi­ness own­ers are forced to re­ly on cred­it cards just to ac­cess for­eign cur­ren­cy for es­sen­tial im­ports like raw ma­te­ri­als and goods. This isn’t a choice; it’s a ne­ces­si­ty to keep their busi­ness­es run­ning.” 

He ex­plained that many SMEs bor­row cred­it cards from friends or fam­i­ly and re­pay at black mar­ket rates, sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than of­fi­cial bank rates. “This im­pos­es a heavy fi­nan­cial bur­den on SMEs, erod­ing prof­its and in­creas­ing op­er­a­tional costs,” he said. 

Ma­haraj al­so crit­i­cised the un­even al­lo­ca­tion of forex, point­ing out that large car deal­er­ships ap­pear to have un­lim­it­ed ac­cess while small­er busi­ness­es strug­gle. “We need a fair and trans­par­ent pol­i­cy for forex al­lo­ca­tion,” he in­sist­ed. 

Ma­haraj said the CCIC is ea­ger to meet with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to dis­cuss the is­sue. “We look for­ward to en­gag­ing with the Min­is­ter to col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly find so­lu­tions, en­sure re­li­able forex ac­cess for SMEs, and re­store lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence in our econ­o­my,” he added.