Re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai said yes­ter­day that find­ing a so­lu­tion to the on­go­ing prob­lems in the for­eign ex­change mar­ket is a pri­or­i­ty.

Speak­ing at a meet­ing at the Cen­tral Bank be­tween rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the in­sti­tu­tion and mem­bers of the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion (BATT), Howai un­der­scored that a long-term so­lu­tion to the for­eign ex­change prob­lems could on­ly oc­cur when mech­a­nisms are found to bring de­mand and sup­ply in­to equi­lib­ri­um, but that that was still some way off.

The banks agreed and pro­vid­ed their rec­om­men­da­tions for eas­ing some of the prob­lems faced by con­sumers, with the Gov­er­nor com­mit­ting to con­sid­er­ing those rec­om­men­da­tions for im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Howai’s meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of BATT is part of a se­ries of key stake­hold­er en­gage­ments, fol­low­ing his ap­point­ment on June 24.

The Gov­er­nor reaf­firmed the Cen­tral Bank’s com­mit­ment to work­ing close­ly with the bank­ing com­mu­ni­ty to iden­ti­fy prag­mat­ic so­lu­tions to its chal­lenges in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple of T&T.

He em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of con­tin­ued and ro­bust col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the in­sti­tu­tion and as the fi­nan­cial sec­tor nav­i­gates the cur­rent eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment.

In a news re­lease on its web­site, the Cen­tral Bank said the banks in­quired as to the way for­ward with the Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI) im­ple­men­ta­tion. The banks sig­nalled their sup­port in pro­gress­ing the project in a man­ner that would be most ef­fi­cient for the bank­ing sys­tem while achiev­ing the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits of this new pay­ment sys­tem.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the meet­ing ad­dressed im­por­tant up­dates on key reg­u­la­to­ry mat­ters.

The meet­ing al­so high­light­ed the Bank’s com­mit­ment to open di­a­logue and con­struc­tive en­gage­ment on key mat­ters crit­i­cal to eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and de­vel­op­ment.

Gov­er­nor Howai en­cour­aged the banks to work with the Cen­tral Bank to ex­plore so­lu­tions and em­pha­sised that, un­less there are neg­a­tive knock-on ef­fects detri­men­tal to the econ­o­my, he would like to see flex­i­bil­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty in ad­dress­ing chal­lenges.

He ex­pressed con­fi­dence that through con­tin­u­ous en­gage­ment and the shar­ing of ideas and per­spec­tives, mean­ing­ful progress can be achieved in sev­er­al ar­eas.

“The Cen­tral Bank will con­tin­ue to work close­ly with BATT and its mem­bers to en­sure that the fi­nan­cial sys­tem re­mains re­silient, ef­fi­cient, and re­spon­sive to the needs of the wider com­mu­ni­ty,” said Gov­er­nor Howai.

In at­ten­dance on be­half of BATT were: Shawn Moses, JMMB Bank (T&T) Ltd, vice pres­i­dent; Nigel Bap­tiste, CEO of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd; Karen Dar­basie, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of First Cit­i­zens Bank Ltd; Marc Jar­dine, group CEO of RBC Roy­al Bank (T&T) Ltd; Mitchell De Sil­va, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Citibank (T&T) Ltd; Ma­hadeo Se­barath, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, CIBC Caribbean Bank (T&T) Ltd; Savon Per­sad, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, ANSA Bank; Stephen Grell, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, ANSA Mer­chant Bank and Ran­dal Cezair, re­gion­al di­rec­tor cor­po­rate and com­mer­cial bank­ing, Sco­tia­bank (T&T) Ltd.