Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert con­tin­ues to dig in his heels amid the on­go­ing de­bate about what should be done about the coun­try’s for­eign ex­change is­sues, say­ing if he float­ed the dol­lar food prices would sky­rock­et.

He main­tains he will not float the dol­lar no mat­ter the pres­sure from com­men­ta­tors, ed­i­to­ri­als, or front-page head­lines. 

Im­bert was speak­ing with blog­ger Rho­da Bharath on a Face­book Live last night. He said such a move would bring wide­spread hard­ship, es­pe­cial­ly for the coun­try’s poor and mid­dle class, while ben­e­fit­ing on­ly a small, wealthy mi­nor­i­ty.

He point­ed to one of the biggest is­sues be­ing this coun­try’s mas­sive $7.5 bil­lion food im­port bill. 

“If you al­low the dol­lar to slide, food prices will in­crease by 30% to 50% al­most im­me­di­ate­ly,” Im­bert ex­plained. “We don’t grow wheat, make cheese, or pro­duce flour here. Most of our food is im­port­ed, so a de­val­u­a­tion would in­stant­ly dri­ve up costs for every­one.”

Im­bert, not­ing the cur­rent in­dus­tri­al cli­mate said, “Trade unions would jus­ti­fi­ably de­mand wage in­creas­es to match the high­er cost of liv­ing. But who would pay for that? Where would the mon­ey come from? I won’t al­low my­self to be bul­lied in­to mak­ing life hard­er for every­day cit­i­zens.”

He al­so crit­i­cised those who stand to ben­e­fit from a de­val­u­a­tion, like peo­ple with large re­serves of US dol­lars hoard­ed abroad. He said a 10-to-1 ex­change rate would in­stant­ly in­flate their wealth. Mean­while, wages and pur­chas­ing pow­er wouldn’t keep pace.

Ear­li­er this week, Im­bert said, through his own re­search, a ma­jor in­crease in cred­it card use was re­spon­si­ble for forex us­age.

“The banks on­ly have a lim­it­ed amount of for­eign ex­change. It’s iron­ic, they’re pro­mot­ing the cards, they’re hav­ing big mar­ket­ing pro­grammes to en­cour­age peo­ple to get cred­it cards. And then the very said cred­it cards cre­ate the prob­lems for the banks be­cause they have to re­mit their pre­cious forex for cred­it card pur­chas­es as the first call on forex.”

Mean­while, the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Visham Bab­wah, said the gov­ern­ment should take a clos­er look at the black mar­ket where many are forced to ob­tain for­eign ex­change.

“If we talk in black mar­ket, how is the black mar­ket op­er­at­ing?” asked Bab­wah in a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“Where are these peo­ple get­ting all these amounts of forex. So I un­der­stand maybe peo­ple are ex­port­ing and would get a lev­el of forex where they get the best price from the high­est bid­der,” he added.

Re­spond­ing to da­ta that showed that a large por­tion of the for­eign ex­change was used by com­mer­cial car deal­er­ships, Bab­wah said, “Some­times deal­ers have sys­tems; some have for­eign sup­pli­ers where you could get a fi­nanc­ing but again, some­times the cost of that is pret­ty high, and you still have to get forex at the end of the day. Could be three months, could be four months down the road. You still have to get, we have to turn to oth­er sources. We have to turn to the black mar­ket. And the black mar­ket is full of mon­ey and that is what I say. So the gov­ern­ment needs to know and take a cor­rect look at what is hap­pen­ing.”

‘Last lap’ for Im­bert

Away from the for­eign ex­change is­sue, Min­is­ter Im­bert con­firmed he plans to run for an­oth­er term in the next gen­er­al elec­tion, de­scrib­ing it as his “last lap.”

Im­bert said, “I plan to of­fer my­self for the next gen­er­al elec­tion, but that will be my last one.” He added, “I think I still have gas in the tank. The brain is still work­ing, and I’m in good health.”