The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has called for ur­gent, col­lec­tive ac­tion to ad­dress the coun­try’s wors­en­ing for­eign ex­change cri­sis, warn­ing that in­ac­tion is no longer a vi­able op­tion for the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

In a me­dia re­lease dat­ed De­cem­ber 19, the Cham­ber said it had is­sued a com­pre­hen­sive po­si­tion pa­per out­lin­ing the scale, caus­es and po­ten­tial so­lu­tions to the for­eign ex­change short­age, which it de­scribed as a na­tion­al­ly recog­nised chal­lenge af­fect­ing busi­ness­es of all sizes, house­holds and the coun­try’s long-term de­vel­op­ment prospects.

The Cham­ber said per­sis­tent short­ages, grow­ing un­cer­tain­ty and widen­ing mar­ket dis­tor­tions are un­der­min­ing busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, weak­en­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence and con­strain­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the TT Cham­ber, ad­dress­ing the cri­sis re­quires broad-based en­gage­ment and a mul­ti­stake­hold­er ap­proach in­volv­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Cen­tral Bank, the pri­vate sec­tor and oth­er cham­bers. It said the com­plex­i­ty of the for­eign ex­change chal­lenge means there is no sin­gle pol­i­cy lever or quick fix, and that so­lu­tions must be de­vel­oped through co­or­di­nat­ed di­a­logue, ev­i­dence-based pol­i­cy­mak­ing and shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

The Cham­ber said there is now broad na­tion­al aware­ness that the ex­ist­ing frame­work is un­der strain, with busi­ness­es across sec­tors ex­pe­ri­enc­ing de­layed ac­cess to for­eign cur­ren­cy, ris­ing op­er­at­ing costs and re­duced com­pet­i­tive­ness. It added that black mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ty sig­nals deep­er mar­ket im­bal­ances, and warned that these con­di­tions are not sus­tain­able and will wors­en over time if left un­ad­dressed.

The TT Cham­ber called on all stake­hold­ers to ral­ly around a shared ob­jec­tive of restor­ing for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, pre­dictabil­i­ty and con­fi­dence in the sys­tem. This, it said, should in­clude open en­gage­ment on ex­change rate pol­i­cy, mea­sures to ex­pand and di­ver­si­fy for­eign ex­change in­flows, in­sti­tu­tion­al re­forms to im­prove com­pet­i­tive­ness and trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion to re­duce un­cer­tain­ty.

The Cham­ber warned that de­lay­ing re­form risks en­trench­ing short­ages, ac­cel­er­at­ing cap­i­tal flight and widen­ing mar­ket dis­tor­tions, po­ten­tial­ly forc­ing a more dis­rup­tive and cost­ly ad­just­ment in the fu­ture. It said time­ly, co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion of­fers a more or­der­ly and cred­i­ble path to­ward sta­bil­i­ty.

The TT Cham­ber said it re­mains com­mit­ted to con­struc­tive en­gage­ment with pol­i­cy­mak­ers, reg­u­la­tors and wider so­ci­ety, and stands ready to con­tribute re­search, da­ta and pri­vate-sec­tor per­spec­tives to sup­port a na­tion­al so­lu­tion to the for­eign ex­change chal­lenge.