Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer min­is­ter in the Fi­nance Min­istry, Vas­ant Bharath, is blam­ing the cur­rent chal­lenges in ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change on what he called Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s “asi­nine eco­nom­ic poli­cies” in the last nine years.

In a scathing post to so­cial me­dia over the week­end, Bharath went as far as to claim that com­mer­cial banks are hold­ing on­to their US dol­lars in pri­vate­ly held ac­counts, wait­ing for the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment to demit of­fice be­fore mak­ing any in­vest­ment de­ci­sions.

De­scrib­ing Min­is­ter Im­bert’s ap­proach to the is­sue as “in­sen­si­tive and con­de­scend­ing,” Bharath took is­sue with the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s re­sponse to whole­salers who lament­ed an in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess for­eign ex­change from the Ex­im Bank.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Oc­to­ber 29, Min­is­ter Im­bert said the for­eign ex­change win­dow opened by the Ex­im Bank for whole­sale im­porters of ba­sic foods and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was a tem­po­rary ini­tia­tive.

But Bharath, who re­cent­ly ex­pressed his will­ing­ness to con­test a seat for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, said the for­eign ex­change is­sue has been com­pound­ed by Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to in­spire con­fi­dence in the lo­cal econ­o­my.

“The rea­son that whole­salers are knock­ing on the Ex­im Bank’s doors is be­cause they are un­able to get for­eign ex­change any­where else. In fact, ac­cord­ing to the Vice Pres­i­dent of Guyana, Bharath Jagdeo, T&T cit­i­zens now have to ob­tain US dol­lars in Guyana to pay for their Trinidad goods,” Bharath ar­gued.

Bharath, who was al­so a for­mer trade min­is­ter, lament­ed that this is now a great em­bar­rass­ment to T&T.

“What a shame, what an ab­solute dis­grace. Once the kings of the Caribbean, you have now re­duced us to the beg­gars of the re­gion. And to com­pound it all, our en­tire eco­nom­ic fu­ture un­der your Gov­ern­ment is to pin all of our hopes on Drag­on Gas in 2027 and the mir­a­cle of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty,” he said.

In his state­ment, Bharath said the Gov­ern­ment has been un­able to gen­er­ate any for­eign or lo­cal di­rect in­vest­ments in T&T with­in the last nine years. He al­leged that sev­er­al large man­u­fac­tur­ers are seek­ing more lu­cra­tive op­por­tu­ni­ties in oth­er coun­tries.

Bharath con­clud­ed his video with a cryp­tic warn­ing for Im­bert.

“You have sin­gle-hand­ed­ly im­per­illed this coun­try and the qual­i­ty of lives for hun­dreds of thou­sands of cit­i­zens. The peo­ple will soon wipe that ar­ro­gant smirk off your face,” he said stern­ly.

Oth­er UNC mem­bers al­so had a say on the forex is­sue but had a more so­lu­tion-ori­ent­ed ap­proach.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray said it is im­per­a­tive that the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers amend­ing the Ex­change Con­trol Act to ad­dress short­com­ings in forex dis­tri­b­u­tion.

This law gives the Cen­tral Bank the au­thor­i­ty to man­age for­eign cur­ren­cy dis­tri­b­u­tion. It states in sec­tion 6 (1) that, “ex­cept with the per­mis­sion of the Bank, no per­son (oth­er than an au­tho­rised deal­er) shall in Trinidad and To­ba­go, buy or bor­row any gold or for­eign cur­ren­cy from, or sell or lend any gold or for­eign cur­ren­cy to, any per­son oth­er than an au­tho­rised deal­er.”

Paray pro­posed cer­tain amend­ments which he be­lieves will “im­prove trans­paren­cy, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, and fair­ness in forex dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

The Ma­yaro MP is first­ly sug­gest­ing manda­to­ry forex al­lo­ca­tions for pri­or­i­ty sec­tors such as small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es, es­sen­tial im­porters and sec­tors crit­i­cal for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Paray al­so be­lieves that banks should pub­lish quar­ter­ly re­ports on for­eign ex­change sales to in­crease trans­paren­cy in the process.

He al­so pro­posed the es­tab­lish­ment of a cen­tral forex pool man­aged by the Cen­tral Bank, where banks con­tribute a per­cent­age of their hold­ings, not­ing this could help re­dis­trib­ute forex based on de­mand pri­or­i­ties.

Paray added that there should be a lim­it on the amount of forex banks can hold rel­a­tive to their fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions to pre­vent ex­ces­sive hoard­ing.

The Ma­yaro MP said there should al­so be the in­tro­duc­tion of a forex clear­ing sys­tem where the Cen­tral Bank can in­ter­vene di­rect­ly dur­ing se­vere short­ages. This, he said, would pro­vide a safe­ty net, en­sur­ing that es­sen­tial sec­tors have ac­cess to nec­es­sary forex even when com­mer­cial banks are con­strained.

Mean­while, for­mer Barataria/San Juan MP Dr Fuad Khan be­lieves there must be leg­isla­tive changes but al­so not­ed the im­pact of the For­eign In­vest­ment Act.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Khan, “The For­eign In­vest­ment Act’s re­stric­tions de­ter for­eign in­vest­ment. Cur­rent reg­u­la­tions, re­quir­ing spe­cif­ic li­cens­ing from the Pres­i­dent and the Min­istry of Fi­nance for US dol­lar trans­ac­tions, cre­ate bar­ri­ers for in­vestors who can­not freely op­er­ate with­out au­tho­rised deal­ers. This mod­el fos­ters in­equal­i­ty, lead­ing to po­ten­tial nepo­tism and lim­it­ed for­eign cur­ren­cy ac­cess for busi­ness own­ers and in­di­vid­u­als alike.”

He be­lieves that by dis­man­tling these poli­cies, “Trinidad and To­ba­go could pave the way for more eq­ui­table ac­cess to for­eign cur­ren­cy, pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and growth.”