Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The Fi­nance Min­istry has launched an SME Forex Win­dow via the Ex­port Im­port Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ex­im­Bank), which it said will in­crease the avail­abil­i­ty of forex to small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es. 

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day morn­ing, the min­istry said the busi­ness­es will be able to ac­cess the for­eign cur­ren­cy win­dow by Tues­day (April 22).

“El­i­gi­ble busi­ness­es could ac­cess up to US$50,000 per month to pay in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness ex­pens­es, which is ex­pect­ed to im­prove forex ac­cess for many of our com­pa­nies in the very near term…At this time, this new forex win­dow will be avail­able to clients of Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed and First Cit­i­zens Bank Lim­it­ed,” the re­lease said.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, all rel­e­vant fi­nan­cial and com­pa­ny in­for­ma­tion must be up­loaded on the Ex­im­Bank web­site to qual­i­fy for ac­cess.

It said once ap­proved, the Ex­im­Bank will is­sue a let­ter to RBL or FCB com­mer­cial branch­es for set­tle­ment and pro­cess­ing of pay­ments di­rect­ly to the in­ter­na­tion­al ven­dors.

The Forex Win­dow was first an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young dur­ing an in­ter­view with for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly on Ra­dio Jagri­ti on Thurs­day evening.

“To­day (Thurs­day), the cab­i­net took a de­ci­sion, and he (Fi­nance Min­is­ter) will an­nounce it to­mor­row, but I guess, I can give a pre­cur­sor that we are in­tro­duc­ing through the Ex­im­Bank for small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es. We are in­tro­duc­ing an al­lo­ca­tion for a cer­tain amount of for­eign ex­change up to US$50,000 for busi­ness­es that qual­i­fy, in ad­di­tion to what com­mer­cial banks al­lo­cate and that would be al­lo­cat­ed through the com­mer­cial banks,” Young said.

“Where­as be­fore you were on­ly able to get ac­cess to it when you need­ed to pay a bill for US$50,000, you may have on­ly been able to get ac­cess to US50,000 at your bank. Now, through this ini­tia­tive we have come up with, the Ex­im­Bank will pro­vide an ad­di­tion­al US$50,000.”

Prime Min­is­ter Young said the Gov­ern­ment will al­so aim to im­prove forex ac­cess to every­day cit­i­zens as well.

“You’re not go­ing to be able to get tens of thou­sands, but you’re go­ing to be able to get the thou­sands or hun­dreds that you need to go on va­ca­tion, send for your chil­dren and these types of things,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dhan­paul met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the ma­jor com­mer­cial banks, the Cen­tral Bank and the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go on March 25 to dis­cuss the forex woes be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in the coun­try.

PM Young has ac­knowl­edged that forex ac­cess has be­come more dif­fi­cult due to the coun­try’s re­duced rev­enues.