Pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­ber (CR­BC), Vivek Char­ran, is hope­ful that the de­par­ture of Navin Dook­er­an from the Ex­im­bank, is a sig­nal of pos­i­tive change in ad­min­is­tra­tion and pol­i­cy at the in­sti­tu­tion.

Char­ran ex­plained that un­der new lead­er­ship, it could mean the bank’s forex dis­tri­b­u­tion could be more am­i­ca­ble to small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es

“We don’t hold Mr Dook­er­an per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for the sys­tem of forex dis­tri­b­u­tion. At the end of the day, the Ex­im­bank is re­al­ly the in­stru­ment of the gov­ern­ment in pow­er. Now that it’s in the hands of this new ad­min­is­tra­tion, we sim­ply hope that part of their cam­paign promis­es, and part of the di­a­logue that’s come from the Gov­ern­ment them­selves, is that they are there to sup­port the SMEs that have re­al­ly suf­fered over the last ten years,” said Char­ran.

The CR­BC pres­i­dent not­ed that avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change was cru­cial to the op­er­a­tions of sev­er­al SMEs, and he is ex­pec­tant that Dook­er­an’s re­place­ment would find a more eq­ui­table so­lu­tion.

“Forex is the lifeblood of re­tail. It is the lifeblood of many of the SMEs and we have seen in the past ten years, or let’s say last five years, in par­tic­u­lar, that those peo­ple who have had a di­rect ac­cess and line to forex, they grew. They did well, they thrived, where­as much of us have not been able to do so,” said Char­ran.

He, how­ev­er, said the sys­tem should not pe­nalise spe­cif­ic busi­ness groups but in­stead en­cour­age a bal­anced dis­tri­b­u­tion that would not place some busi­ness­es in dif­fi­cul­ty.

He said, “It al­ways both­ers me, as the pres­i­dent of a cham­ber, to hear talk bandied about this sec­tor or these par­tic­u­lar types of busi­ness­es should shut­ter and close, or that forex should not be giv­en to these par­tic­u­lar types of busi­ness­es. At the end of the day, we should re­al­ly look to­wards an econ­o­my, or have an econ­o­my in which busi­ness­es are not be­ing closed com­plete­ly and shut down for the next in­de­ter­mi­nate amount of years, with­out much no­tice when it comes to the fact that they can’t get enough forex for their needs.”

Dook­er­an was re­moved as Ex­im­bank pres­i­dent last Fri­day, spark­ing con­cern from sev­er­al busi­ness groups.