GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira says last week’s ter­mi­na­tion of Navin Dook­er­an as CEO of the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of T&T (Ex­im­bank) may sig­nal the im­pend­ing end to con­ces­sion­al forex fi­nanc­ing for non-ex­port sec­tors, un­der­scor­ing the need for strate­gic ad­just­ments in eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy.

Her com­ments come amid grow­ing scruti­ny of Ex­im­bank’s for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion prac­tices, which have long been a point of con­tention among stake­hold­ers.

Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and chick­en com­pa­nies topped the list of for­eign ex­change users who ob­tained mon­ey from the Ex­im­bank over the last five years.

This rev­e­la­tion rais­es ques­tions about whether the bank’s re­sources were be­ing di­rect­ed to­ward con­sump­tion rather than pro­duc­tion, a con­cern Nunez-Tesheira did not hes­i­tate to voice.

“How could they (chick­en com­pa­nies) be get­ting so much for­eign ex­change at con­ces­sion­ary loans, when they are not in­volved, as far as I know, in ex­port. They are not in­volved in mak­ing for­eign ex­change, they are in­volved in con­sum­ing for­eign ex­change ... I don’t know why Mr Dook­er­an was ter­mi­nat­ed ... what I would say is that what­ev­er rea­son that Mr Dook­er­an was ter­mi­nat­ed, I would say it was a sig­nal to this coun­try that what­ev­er Ex­im­bank was do­ing, which was al­lo­cat­ing so much of its US dol­lars to con­sump­tion and not for im­port sub­sti­tu­tion and not for ex­port, what­ev­er it was do­ing, those days are over,” Nunez-Tesheira said while speak­ing dur­ing CNC 3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day.

She al­so warned that T&T is nav­i­gat­ing one of its most chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic pe­ri­ods in re­cent years, char­ac­terised by weak in­vestor con­fi­dence, mount­ing for­eign ex­change pres­sures, and height­ened geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty, de­spite the gov­ern­ment’s op­ti­mistic out­look and am­bi­tious de­vel­op­ment plans.

Nunez-Tesheira ad­dressed the grow­ing pub­lic re­frain that “the coun­try has no mon­ey,” not­ing that while the phrase may sound alarmist, it is ground­ed in re­al eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors.

Both rat­ing agen­cies Moody’s and Stan­dard & Poor’s have as­signed neg­a­tive out­looks to this coun­try, a shift Nunez-Tesheira said is deeply con­cern­ing.

“This time around, both Moody’s and Stan­dard & Poor’s, which are the ma­jor rat­ing agen­cies that in­vestors will look at, they both have said that it’s neg­a­tive. And when they say out­look is neg­a­tive, that means they’re look­ing to the fu­ture, they’re not just look­ing at what is right now. So that is not a good thing, be­cause how I in­ter­pret that to mean is that what­ev­er plans or what­ev­er projects this cur­rent gov­ern­ment puts in place, clear­ly they don’t have that con­fi­dence that they are go­ing to reach a point where they can say that the out­look is good or the out­look is sta­ble.

“So that is a mat­ter, I think, of con­cern to us,” she ex­plained.

Re­gard­ing the per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­age, Nunez-Tesheira en­dorsed the Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed in­ten­tion to pri­ori­tise forex al­lo­ca­tion to ex­port-earn­ing sec­tors.

“When you have lim­it­ed for­eign ex­change, and you can see from Moody’s re­port, they did spec­i­fy that part of the rea­son why they gave a down­grade and they placed the out­look on neg­a­tive, was be­cause of the forex po­si­tion ... So, if you are look­ing at your for­eign ex­change re­serves go­ing low­er and low­er and low­er, it’s a re­flec­tion of your trade.

“It’s a re­flec­tion that you are not ex­port­ing suf­fi­cient, that you’re earn­ing suf­fi­cient US dol­lars. So, that sit­u­a­tion with the for­eign cur­ren­cy, is a se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion. And I think that the gov­ern­ment is right that one of the things that they have got to do is to put the em­pha­sis on busi­ness­es that are earn­ing for­eign ex­change,” Nunez-Tesheira ex­plained.

She al­so weighed in on the re­gion’s mount­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, par­tic­u­lar­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion­ing amid es­ca­lat­ing US–Venezuela re­la­tions.

She sug­gest­ed prime min­is­te­r­i­al align­ment with Wash­ing­ton may be a cal­cu­lat­ed gam­ble.