Nadaleen Singh

In re­sponse to com­plaints yes­ter­day from the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T that some of its mem­bers still had prob­lems ac­cess­ing US cur­ren­cy, the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) has made an­oth­er in­jec­tion of US $75 mil­lion in­to the mar­ket. The TTMA had called on the CBTT, the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the bank­ing and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to work to­geth­er to fix the prob­lem. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the CBTT said: "As part of its sched­uled for­eign ex­change in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme, CBTT will sell US$75 mil­lion to the bank­ing sys­tem to­day. The tim­ing of this sale is based on the bank's on­go­ing analy­sis of mar­ket con­di­tions and con­sul­ta­tion ear­li­er this week with for­eign ex­change traders. This in­ter­ven­tion comes 15 days af­ter the bank sold US$100 mil­lion to the sys­tem on Ju­ly 2. The to­tal sale of for­eign ex­change by Cen­tral Bank for Ju­ly 2014, thus far, is US$175 mil­lion."

The bank ex­pects to make more in­jec­tions of US cur­ren­cy in the fu­ture. "In the first half of Ju­ly, in­flows of US cur­ren­cy have been low, as ex­pect­ed, giv­en the rate of for­eign ex­change con­ver­sions by en­er­gy com­pa­nies. We an­tic­i­pate this trend to con­tin­ue in the lat­ter part of Ju­ly and in­to Au­gust. The Cen­tral Bank is, there­fore, ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to pro­vide sup­port to the for­eign ex­change mar­ket, in­ject­ing more US cur­ren­cy in­to the sys­tem with­in the next few weeks." Asked how much of a prob­lem is the short in sup­ply to the econ­o­my, Vas­ant Bharath, Trade, In­vest­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter yes­ter­day said: "I am not aware of the ex­tent, apart from the fact that I did no­tice this morn­ing a com­ment from the TTMA. I in­tend to bring it up at Cab­i­net. Clear­ly, we had ex­pect­ed that, with what the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank had put in place, that these mat­ters would have been re­solved. Clear­ly, that is not the is­sue."

Bharath was speak­ing to re­porters yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the con­fer­ence, "Cri­sis Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Trans­form­ing PR crises in­to Op­por­tu­ni­ties," which was held at the Hilton Trinidad Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, St Ann's. He added that the Gov­ern­ment is aware the is­sue is "a wide­spread and preva­lent is­sue, it will not just be lim­it­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ers on­ly." Ac­cord­ing to the CBTT, the to­tal US cur­ren­cy sold by Cen­tral Bank to au­tho­rised deal­ers for the year is "US$865 mil­lion, US$210 mil­lion high­er than the amount sold for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2013. At the end of June 2014, T&T's net of­fi­cial re­serves stood at US$10,304 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing an ex­cess of 12 months of im­port cov­er."