Small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es have ex­pressed con­cerns over the po­ten­tial chal­lenges to meet­ing their im­port needs due to in­suf­fi­cient stocks of for­eign ex­change, fol­low­ing Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed’s re­cent re­duc­tion of cus­tomers’ cred­it card lim­it by US$5000.

Last Fri­day, RBL cus­tomers ex­pressed shock over the move, which the com­pa­ny stat­ed would take ef­fect from Sep­tem­ber 21st in an emailed no­tice.

RBL said, “This change in­cludes all trans­ac­tions con­duct­ed out­side of T&T, as well as all in­ter­na­tion­al on­line trans­ac­tions, in­clud­ing trans­ac­tions where the cho­sen billing cur­ren­cy is the TT dol­lar. These on­line trans­ac­tions will be in­clud­ed in your US$5,000 billing cy­cle lim­it. All lo­cal TT-dol­lar trans­ac­tions con­duct­ed on­line or at mer­chants re­main un­af­fect­ed.”

Small and medi­um-sized busi­ness own­ers yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that nav­i­gat­ing the un­cer­tain wa­ters in their day-to-day op­er­a­tions was now a trou­bling prospect and that sup­ply dis­rup­tions now seemed to be in­evitable.

Ra­mona George, own­er of Ac­ces­so­ry Palace in Town Cen­tre Mall, Port-of-Spain, said the re­duc­tion in the cred­it card lim­it cut par­tic­u­lar­ly deep for small busi­ness own­ers.

“This move will make some con­straints up­on the small­er and medi­um busi­ness­es—it is re­al­ly, re­al­ly a chal­leng­ing time and with Christ­mas com­ing, we would need that ex­tra fund­ing,” George told Guardian Me­dia.

George, who has been a busi­ness­woman for over 15 years, al­so not­ed that the cred­it card ad­just­ment had di­rect­ly im­pact­ed the pro­cure­ment of es­sen­tial im­ports.

George stat­ed, “Re­al­ly and tru­ly, the ease of do­ing busi­ness now is be­com­ing a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult. The next ques­tion be­comes where do we get this fund­ing from, be­cause if you do not get the fund­ing from your bank, then the black mar­ket is go­ing to be there and avail­able to peo­ple and I think that is go­ing in a di­rec­tion that is more chal­leng­ing, as things will get more ex­pen­sive.”

As she weighed her risks stem­ming from RBL’s cut in its cred­it card lim­it, George said among the im­me­di­ate chal­lenges were de­lays in de­liv­ery sched­ules, which would leave cus­tomers dis­grun­tled and force busi­ness own­ers to dig deep­er in­to their pock­ets just to fu­el sup­ply. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia un­der con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, a se­nior of­fi­cial at Gar­den of Eden on Queen Jan­nelle Com­mis­siong Street, Port-of-Spain, a flower shop which has been op­er­at­ing for al­most 50 years, said the lat­est lim­it could al­so po­ten­tial­ly strain their re­la­tion­ship with their for­eign sup­pli­ers.

“Our sup­pli­ers usu­al­ly un­der­stand and make pro­vi­sions for us but at the end of the day, when you take peo­ple’s goods you still have to pay for it and what is hap­pen­ing now can re­sult in a lot of small­er busi­ness­es clos­ing down be­cause some sup­pli­ers may not be will­ing to bend for them.”

The of­fi­cial said for­mu­lat­ing a strat­e­gy to ad­dress the trade im­bal­ances would be crit­i­cal to their busi­ness’ sur­vival.

“When they cut it down to five thou­sand dol­lars, how can we con­duct our busi­ness op­er­a­tions? The banks not re­al­ly re­leas­ing cash to cus­tomers, so you forced to use your cred­it card. Our ship­ment of flow­ers comes in week­ly and nor­mal­ly they give you a month cred­it to pay for it, when you on­ly have US$5000, what can you re­al­ly do with that?”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, head of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­ton, Ra­jiv Diptee, said his mem­ber­ship re­mained very alert to the im­pact of for­eign ex­change ad­just­ments by lo­cal banks.

“It will prob­a­bly mean re­vis­it­ing the port­fo­lio of prod­ucts that needs to be car­ried and re­vis­it­ing ex­tend­ed re­la­tion­ships be­tween banks, the ac­tu­al sup­pli­ers and cred­it prin­ci­pals who sup­ply them with goods from abroad,” Diptee said.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Roger Roach, said a stake­hold­er dis­cus­sion on the for­eign ex­change mat­ter has been sched­uled for lat­er this week with his mem­ber­ship.