Shas­tri Boodan

The Gov­ern­ment’s launch of a ded­i­cat­ed SME For­eign Ex­change Win­dow through the Ex­port–Im­port Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go has been hailed by lo­cal busi­ness lead­ers and PNM can­di­dates as a pos­i­tive step to­ward bol­ster­ing small and medi­um‑sized en­ter­pris­es.

Richie Sookhai, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and PNM can­di­date for Ch­agua­nas East, said the new fa­cil­i­ty shows that the Stu­art Young–led ad­min­is­tra­tion is “lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple.”

In a phone in­ter­view, Sookhai ac­knowl­edged that many SMEs would need help meet­ing statu­to­ry re­quire­ments—re­call­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges dur­ing COVID‑19 re­lief ef­forts—and pledged to use his of­fice to guide busi­ness­es through the ap­pli­ca­tion process.

“What I in­tend to do through the MP’s of­fice is to as­sist SMEs in get­ting up to par,” he said. He added that mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty have wel­comed eas­i­er ac­cess to US dol­lars, and stressed that “every­body should have a fair chance to ac­cess such funds.” Sookhai ex­pressed con­fi­dence in his cam­paign, as­sert­ing that vot­ers in Ch­agua­nas East are ready for change and view him as “a vi­able op­tion.”

In Mara­bel­la, Mukesh Ram­s­ingh, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce and PNM can­di­date for Clax­ton Bay, echoed that sen­ti­ment. He de­scribed the forex win­dow as “a very good step in the right di­rec­tion” and ev­i­dence of a gov­ern­ment at­tuned to pub­lic con­cerns.

Ram­s­ingh point­ed to oth­er re­cent mea­sures—such as the gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to wage‑ne­go­ti­a­tion calls by nurs­es and teach­ers—as fur­ther proof that Prime Min­is­ter Young’s ad­min­is­tra­tion is adopt­ing “a dif­fer­ent type of gov­er­nance,” char­ac­ter­ized by “younger blood and new blood in the PNM.”

“This isn’t a last‑ditch ef­fort.”

Ram­s­ingh said. “It’s a trans­for­ma­tion that bodes well for the coun­try.”

In a re­lease, the Min­istry of Fi­nance 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.