For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai is the new Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, and one of his first tasks is to ad­dress the for­eign ex­change woes this coun­try has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

Yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Howai walked out of the Min­istry of Fi­nance build­ing on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, with his in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment as the new gov­er­nor.

In a state­ment last evening, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo con­firmed the ap­point­ment of for­mer gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire was re­voked with im­me­di­ate ef­fect on Tues­day.

Two weeks ago, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Hi­laire was re­fus­ing to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion on the top users of for­eign ex­change in this coun­try.

Hi­laire was ap­point­ed in De­cem­ber 2015 and his ap­point­ment was re­newed in 2020.

Yes­ter­day, Gov­er­nor Howai, in a sit-down in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, said he will be on the job from to­day. He ad­mit­ted that it would be a big chal­lenge.

He said he re­ceived the call of­fer­ing him the post of gov­er­nor on Mon­day from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who asked him to serve. He said he had been asked in the past if he was open to be­ing the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor.

Out­lin­ing some of his first ma­jor tasks, Howai said deal­ing with the for­eign ex­change crunch was one that had to be trod­den care­ful­ly.

“We have to con­sid­er what are the op­tions avail­able to us from a mon­e­tary point of view and a for­eign ex­change point of view to en­sure we can cre­ate the most val­ue for the econ­o­my on what we have at the mo­ment.”

Asked how he is go­ing to han­dle the Gov­ern­ment’s re­quest for con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing forex, Howai said he needs to un­der­stand ex­act­ly what is re­quired and what in­for­ma­tion has been re­quest­ed.

“Cer­tain­ly, it’s not my in­ten­tion to name any­one. So, you know, for those who may have been con­cerned about that, I think they can ex­hale. That’s not go­ing to be an is­sue,” he ex­plained.

“Still, we have to de­ter­mine how best we can use the in­for­ma­tion that we have to help us de­vel­op the right mix of poli­cies to achieve the best re­sults in terms of the dis­tri­b­u­tion and, as I said, the hus­band­ing of a very scarce re­source in T&T.”

The new gov­er­nor said the Cen­tral Bank has to be mind­ful of how in­for­ma­tion is shared to main­tain a lev­el of trans­paren­cy that would al­low the pub­lic to be com­fort­able that their funds are be­ing utilised and are be­ing dis­trib­uted in the best way.

“At the same time, we have to bal­ance that with the need to en­sure, very im­por­tant­ly, that the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of the bank­ing busi­ness of the peo­ple of T&T is al­so pre­served.”

Howai, who has over 50 years of bank­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, pre­vi­ous­ly served as CEO of state bank First Cit­i­zens from 1997 to 2012. He worked for 32 years at the bank and its pre­de­ces­sors, Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank and Work­ers’ Bank (1989) Ltd. Howai al­so served as chair­man at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion and as fi­nance min­is­ter from 2012-2015 un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The new CBTT gov­er­nor said he does not be­lieve he has been caught in the mid­dle of a sce­nario which may be­come a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball. Howai ex­plained that the pub­lic must un­der­stand what Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to achieve.

“What in­for­ma­tion we can pro­vide and what sup­port we can pro­vide that would help the Gov­ern­ment to achieve its le­git­i­mate ob­jec­tives as far as the needs of the pop­u­la­tion are con­cerned. So, it’s a ques­tion of find­ing a so­lu­tion.”

Tan­coo has wel­comed Howai and said he is a man with a proven fi­nan­cial ex­pe­ri­ence and an out­stand­ing track record.

More on Hi­laire’s dis­missal to come

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia reached out to for­mer gov­er­nor Hi­laire but up to late yes­ter­day evening, there was no re­sponse.  

How­ev­er, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Tan­coo in­di­cat­ed in a state­ment yes­ter­day that fur­ther in­for­ma­tion about the re­vo­ca­tion of Hi­laire’s ap­point­ment will be re­leased by the Gov­ern­ment in the com­ing days.

The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent re­spond­ed to ques­tions about the re­vo­ca­tion of the ap­point­ment, say­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo acts on the ad­vice of the Cab­i­net.

It said the leg­isla­tive au­thor­i­ty for the ap­point­ment and re­vo­ca­tion of the ap­point­ment of the gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank is pro­vid­ed by sec­tions 7 and 12, re­spec­tive­ly, of the Cen­tral Bank Act chap­ter 79:02.    

The state­ment added that these sec­tions must, how­ev­er, be read and ap­plied along­side sec­tion 80 (1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T, which states, “In the ex­er­cise of his func­tions un­der this Con­sti­tu­tion or any oth­er law, the Pres­i­dent shall act by the ad­vice of the Cab­i­net or a Min­is­ter act­ing un­der the gen­er­al au­thor­i­ty of the Cab­i­net.”

In De­cem­ber 2015, for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran was fired by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ear­li­er this year, he emerged vic­to­ri­ous in his le­gal bat­tle over be­ing wrong­ful­ly dis­missed.