Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment, the Cen­tral Bank and the coun­try's top bank­ing ex­ec­u­tives are ex­plor­ing "a cer­tain pos­si­bil­i­ty" to re­solve T&T's long-stand­ing for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty cri­sis.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Young said the pos­si­ble so­lu­tion arose dur­ing Tues­day's meet­ing at White­hall to dis­cuss the is­sue of mak­ing for­eign ex­change more eas­i­ly avail­able to the av­er­age cit­i­zen in T&T.

Asked if the meet­ing had brought the coun­try any clos­er to a res­o­lu­tion of the is­sue, Young said, "What was very in­ter­est­ing in the meet­ing is when I was prob­ing and putting pres­sure on those who have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, A cer­tain pos­si­bil­i­ty came up, which I im­me­di­ate­ly pounced on. I said, Let us ex­plore that. I would like to find that so­lu­tion. We are not go­ing to get more for­eign ex­change. So if we are on­ly earn­ing US$10 mil­lion, that is what we have to dis­trib­ute as eq­ui­tably as pos­si­ble among the pop­u­la­tion."

Un­der­scor­ing the fact that the for­eign ex­change so­lu­tion must fo­cus on the av­er­age cit­i­zen, Young said he asked Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Vish­nu Dhan­paul and the Min­istry of Fi­nance, along with the Cen­tral Bank to look at the var­i­ous op­tions and re­con­vene with the bankers on April 9.

"I don't want to be pre­ma­ture, but I'm hope­ful that there's some­thing there that we may be able to do," said Young.

At yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence, Young al­so raised the is­sue of the fees and charges that T&T's com­mer­cial banks re­quire their cus­tomers to pay.

He said at the meet­ing with the bankers on Tues­day, he point­ed out that banks are clos­ing down branch­es, shrink­ing their re­tail bank­ing ser­vices and en­cour­ag­ing their cus­tomers to use their on­line ser­vices.

Those de­ci­sions, the prime min­is­ter said, should re­sult in cost re­duc­tions.

"So there­fore, why are we not see­ing ef­fi­cien­cy of on­line ser­vices equat­ing to low­er charges and low­er ex­pens­es to us, the cit­i­zens?" said Young, not­ing the bankers had re­spond­ed to his con­cerns by point­ing to in­vest­ments in in­fra­struc­ture and the up­grade of ser­vices.

Telling the me­dia that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion, Young not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment "has cer­tain pow­ers in law, but I'm hop­ing we don't have to reach to that stage."