RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As Trinidad and To­ba­go faces on­go­ing for­eign ex­change short­ages, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­vealed that bankers have been re­cep­tive to dis­cus­sions on for­eign ex­change ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and so­lu­tions to in­creas­ing bank fees.

His com­ments came fol­low­ing a meet­ing with com­mer­cial bank lead­ers and Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter on yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter vis­it­ing friends and rel­a­tives at the Debe Is­lam­ic As­so­ci­a­tion Masjid, where he broke fast with the Ja­maat on Tues­day evening, Young ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with on­go­ing talks.

"This af­ter­noon, I had a meet­ing with the Cen­tral Bank as well as the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion and the heads and chair­men of var­i­ous banks. I ex­pressed my sen­ti­ments and thoughts on what we need to do to help the av­er­age cit­i­zen—par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to for­eign ex­change, which is not a huge amount for many av­er­age cit­i­zens."

He added, "My main con­cern was to ex­press my thoughts and tell them we must start look­ing at so­lu­tions."

De­scrib­ing the meet­ing as pro­duc­tive, Young said, "We had some fruit­ful con­ver­sa­tions. I asked them to en­gage with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (Vish­nu Dhan­paul), and I will meet with them again two Wednes­days from now."

Young said that dur­ing the meet­ing, he al­so raised con­cerns about in­creas­ing bank charges.

"I raised the is­sue of bank charges and ser­vice fees be­cause, as a cus­tomer of the bank, I need­ed some un­der­stand­ing of what we can do as a gov­ern­ment to as­sist so we are in dis­cus­sion with the banks to ad­dress that. These charges af­fect all cit­i­zens who use the banks."

He added, "They were very re­cep­tive. It was a good meet­ing."

Young said he had re­viewed re­ports from var­i­ous groups be­fore the meet­ing.

"I read some pa­pers from the Cen­tral Bank be­fore, as well as the con­cerns from the busi­ness cham­bers. I start­ed off by telling them I was fo­cussed on the av­er­age cit­i­zen and on what we could do to help."

With­out giv­ing de­tails, he said: "An in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tion came up—one that I saw as vi­able. I went to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and asked him to hold the nec­es­sary meet­ings, and every­one will re­port back in a few days," he said.

Ad­dress­ing lead­er­ship con­cerns with­in the PNM and crit­i­cisms that he was part of the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion for 10 years but had not im­ple­ment­ed any of these mea­sures, Young dis­missed these as­ser­tions

"We have been the same PNM for 70 years. We fol­low prin­ci­ples and poli­cies for a smooth tran­si­tion of lead­er­ship. What is hap­pen­ing now is what I’ve been speak­ing about—we are build­ing a sol­id plat­form. I have dif­fer­ent ideas to con­tin­ue the work that was pre­vi­ous­ly done. It’s not the same busi­ness as usu­al for the last 10 years. We are writ­ing a new chap­ter and build­ing a foun­da­tion. The pop­u­la­tion un­der­stands that we are in­tro­duc­ing in­no­v­a­tive ideas," he said.

Al­though Young is ex­pect­ed to trav­el to Ja­maica to­day to meet with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, he de­clined to say who will act as Prime Min­is­ter in his ab­sence.

He re­vealed that the talks with Ru­bio are ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on Unit­ed States for­eign pol­i­cy and its ef­fect on Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider re­gion.

"The is­sues on the agen­da will be de­cid­ed be­tween my­self and Ru­bio, the Sec­re­tary of State. We will be ad­dress­ing mat­ters of se­cu­ri­ty, Cari­com is­sues and en­er­gy con­cerns. I don’t want to say more on that be­cause it’s pre­ma­ture, and we need to en­ter dis­cus­sions with open minds. I will re­port back to the pop­u­la­tion on Thurs­day at the post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence," Young said.

When asked what he hoped to achieve, he added, "I am fly­ing out, hop­ing to achieve what is best for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and I will speak more on this when I re­turn."

Dur­ing the vis­it to the Masjid, Young met with his aunts, Nazreen Ho­sein and Gem­ma Ho­sein, as well as his un­cle, Bob­by Ho­sein. Young said his de­ceased grand­moth­er, Doris Ho­sein had been ac­tive in the Masjid be­fore her pass­ing, re­call­ing the fond mem­o­ries he had as a child at­tend­ing func­tions in Debe.