Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­pot­er

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of hav­ing a vest­ed in­ter­est in pro­mot­ing and fa­cil­i­tat­ing black mar­ket forex trans­ac­tions in the coun­try.

Speak­ing at the UNC’s week­ly me­dia con­fer­ence in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dav­en­drenath Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment’s forex dis­tri­b­u­tion poli­cies are de­signed to en­rich its fi­nanciers and friends at the ex­pense of small and medi­um busi­ness­es and com­mon peo­ple.

Tan­coo, the op­po­si­tion’s shad­ow fi­nance min­is­ter, called the busi­ness­es, who he al­leged were ben­e­fit­ting, the “for­eign ex­change ca­bal.”

“Mo­nop­o­lies have been cre­at­ed, sim­ply be­cause they can ac­cess for­eign ex­change but oth­ers in the same type of in­dus­try could not. The re­sult and ef­fect is that prices of goods and ser­vices have in­creased be­cause some im­porters are forced to pay black mar­ket rates, mak­ing them un­com­pet­i­tive against the mega play­ers who have easy ac­cess,” he said.

“Cu­ri­ous­ly, the prob­lem of ac­cess to for­eign ex­change does not seem to af­fect all busi­ness­es equal­ly. Some busi­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly the large con­glom­er­ates and their as­so­ci­at­ed in­ter­ests, seem to have ab­solute­ly no prob­lem get­ting for­eign ex­change,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Tan­coo, the Gov­ern­ment and its favoured forex busi­ness­es are rob­bing the coun­try of its fu­ture. He ac­cused Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert of re­peat­ed­ly telling the coun­try over the years that there was no for­eign ex­change cri­sis, while there clear­ly was.

“Dur­ing the term of this Gov­ern­ment, mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es, which are greater in num­ber than large busi­ness­es, seem to have the great­est dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting for­eign ex­change from the bank­ing sec­tor,” he said.

He added that many food and med­i­cine im­porters in par­tic­u­lar, have been im­pact­ed.

Tan­coo called for an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine where an al­leged amount of US$14 bil­lion pumped in­to the sys­tem over the last nine years has gone.

Mean­while, ac­cord­ing to Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, leader of the op­po­si­tion busi­ness, or­di­nary peo­ple can­not ac­cess small amounts of US cur­ren­cy from the banks, yet sev­er­al en­ti­ties were able to ac­cess mil­lions of US dol­lars from the banks to in­vest in Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Lim­it­ed. Last week, a re­ceiv­er was ap­point­ed to man­age the sale of Ni­Quan’s as­sets.

“We are see­ing be­fore us, write-offs and I’ll start off with the first write-off. Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, through some con­struc­tion fi­nance fa­cil­i­ty, and we want Re­pub­lic Bank to tell Trinidad and To­ba­go whether it has writ­ten off some $150 mil­lion as a re­sult of an in­vest­ment in Ni­Quan.” He al­so claimed three cred­it unions had in­vest­ed in Ni­Quan in US cur­ren­cy.

“Where is this cred­it union get­ting this mon­ey from? It is from the banks. Which bank? We don’t know.”

George again calls for FIA re­peal

Mean­while, chair­man of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber Mar­tin George has again called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly and un­con­di­tion­al­ly ap­peal the For­eign In­vest­ment Act.

He al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fool­ish­ly and stub­born­ly cling­ing to it.

The For­eign In­vest­ment Act reg­u­lates for­eign in­vestors. For ex­am­ple, for­eign own­ers are lim­it­ed to a cer­tain acreage of land own­er­ship for res­i­den­tial and busi­ness pur­pos­es, re­quir­ing a li­cence to own more land.

“You have this ar­cha­ic leg­is­la­tion on the books, which def­i­nite­ly acts as an im­ped­i­ment and block on any di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment in To­ba­go, which would then ob­vi­ous­ly ben­e­fit Trinidad be­cause if any­one is look­ing to de­vel­op a guest house or vil­la or ho­tel or what­ev­er, and they are bring­ing in for­eign ex­change, then ob­vi­ous­ly the for­eign ex­changes will have to be done in Trinidad for goods and ma­te­ri­als,” he said.