CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The new car in­dus­try has been la­belled as the largest con­sumer of for­eign ex­change in this coun­try by Min­ster in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning.

Min­is­ter Man­ning’s rev­e­la­tion came dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2024/2025 Bud­get de­bate in the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

In ad­dress­ing the is­sue of for­eign ex­change, Man­ning said cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go in many ways are vic­tims of their own suc­cess.

“We hear this all the time about what is the Gov­ern­ment do­ing about pro­tect­ing for­eign ex­change, Madam Speak­er do you know what is the largest con­sumer of for­eign ex­change in Trinidad and To­ba­go? It is new mo­tor ve­hi­cles, Madam Speak­er.”

He said peo­ple need to un­der­stand where they are as a coun­try.

“So Trin­bag­o­ni­ans want ac­cess to new ve­hi­cles and they want cheap fu­el but they don’t want any traf­fic and they don’t want any of the neg­a­tives that come out from this. You want ac­cess to for­eign ex­change but you al­so want lux­u­ry food items which de­plete for­eign ex­change ,even though we need that for­eign ex­change for es­sen­tial items,” Man­ning ex­plained.

He added that in any econ­o­my there must be give and take, so when some­thing is done in one sec­tor, it af­fects an­oth­er.

“We have to be knowl­edge­able and in­formed about how ex­act­ly we are deal­ing with the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go and as I said ear­li­er, this Gov­ern­ment in the past decade has been both rea­son­able and re­spon­si­ble in man­ag­ing the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

In terms of this coun­try’s 7.3 bil­lion dol­lar food im­port bill, Man­ning said no mat­ter what kind of tar­iffs the Gov­ern­ment puts on lux­u­ry food items, the food im­port bill con­tin­ues to rise.

In De­cem­ber 2015, then-Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran was fired af­ter he re­vealed de­tails of the biggest for­eign ex­change users in the coun­try.

How­ev­er, in Oc­to­ber 2022, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad ruled that Ram­bar­ran should re­ceive $5.47 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for be­ing wrong­ful­ly dis­missed by the Gov­ern­ment.