Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert has an­nounced the forex win­dow at the Ex­im­Bank for es­sen­tial im­ports, cre­at­ed dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, has been re­sumed in a re­struc­tured for­mat. The new win­dow came in­to ef­fect on No­vem­ber 1.

"The Gov­ern­ment's al­lo­ca­tion of US dol­lars to the Ex­im­Bank for this es­sen­tial im­ports fa­cil­i­ty will now be US$25M per month, a US$5M re­duc­tion from the COVID-19 list of im­ports. This is con­sid­ered to be ad­e­quate at this time. It should al­so be not­ed the forex win­dow for ex­port man­u­fac­tur­ers is not be­ing ad­just­ed and will re­main," a re­lease sent out by the Min­istry of Fi­nance said.

The el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria have been re­vised. The re­lease said pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed items such as hand sani­tis­ers and face masks are no longer con­sid­ered es­sen­tial. The core list of es­sen­tial items, which in­cludes cer­tain foods and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, will re­main un­changed for now but will be sub­ject to pe­ri­od­ic re­views to as­sess the need for ad­di­tions or dele­tions.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said the gov­ern­ment will ex­am­ine the role of lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­sid­er­ing ways to make it eas­i­er for lo­cal busi­ness­es to ac­cess for­eign cur­ren­cy need­ed for pro­duc­tion.

The cur­rent forex win­dow for ex­port man­u­fac­tur­ers re­mains the same.

Im­bert has been teas­ing the idea of this change for a while.

"Dur­ing COVID, we cre­at­ed a spe­cial win­dow at the Ex­im­bank to pro­vide USD for es­sen­tial im­ports, such as food and med­i­cine. Covid is over, so we are re­view­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of that forex win­dow," Im­bert post­ed on X on Oc­to­ber 27.

"Our EX­IM­BANK was es­tab­lished to fa­cil­i­tate the growth and ex­pan­sion of our ex­port and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors; to en­hance our for­eign ex­change earn­ings, and cre­ate em­ploy­ment through as­sis­tance to our EX­PORT­ING com­pa­nies and NOT to fa­cil­i­tate whole­salers of im­port­ed fin­ished goods," he post­ed on X on Oc­to­ber 29.