Nadaleen Singh

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank in T&T Du­ane Hink­son said while there has been a lot of "talk and noise" about prob­lems with the sup­ply of US cur­ren­cy, da­ta shows that be­tween com­mer­cial banks and the Cen­tral Bank there should be enough for trade and non-trade need­sHink­son spoke with re­porters yes­ter­day dur­ing the cof­fee break at the bank's In­fra­struc­ture Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

He said the "kinks" as­so­ci­at­ed with the new for­eign ex­change arrange­ment the Cen­tral Bank put in place prob­a­bly con­tributed to the prob­lems be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced."I think from the re­cent state­ments by the Cen­tral bank and the Bank­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, we are work­ing a lot col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to en­sure that cus­tomers' needs are met. We an­tic­i­pate go­ing for­ward that they will see less and less noise out there in the mar­ket with re­spect to for­eign ex­change sup­ply," he said.

Mean­while, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, which is host­ing a break­fast meet­ing on the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion on Fri­day, said the Cen­tral Bank's in­jec­tions of US dol­lars in­to the sys­tem has eased the low sup­ply of cur­ren­cy on the mar­ket.

"We cer­tain­ly be­lieve that these in­jec­tions have re­sult­ed in some re­duc­tion in the cur­rent queue for $US de­mand; how­ev­er, we have con­tin­ued to hear from our mem­bers and the wider busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on how the con­tin­ued short­age of for­eign ex­change has af­fect­ed busi­ness op­er­a­tions in T&T," the Cham­ber said in a state­ment.

"With a new for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion sys­tem in­tro­duced by the Cen­tral Bank in April, the Cham­ber would like our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to be bet­ter in­formed as to what this new sys­tem en­tails, and how the Cen­tral Bank ex­pects this sys­tem to bet­ter meet the de­mand for US cur­ren­cy. Fur­ther, what role does the bank­ing sec­tor play on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of US dol­lars?""The T&T Cham­ber wants to con­tin­ue to en­cour­age dis­cus­sions and di­a­logue to find so­lu­tions to the For­eign Ex­change is­sue," said Cham­ber CEO, Cather­ine Ku­mar.

"We want to en­sure that any sys­tem put in place will al­le­vi­ate what is a grow­ing chal­lenge for our pri­vate sec­tor, and, by ex­ten­sion, the wider com­mu­ni­ty."