Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Lar­ry Howai, said yes­ter­day that the in­sti­tu­tion has “quite a few ini­tia­tives,” that would bring T&T clos­er to hav­ing a more eq­ui­table al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change.

Speak­ing at the De La Rue awards cer­e­mo­ny at the Cen­tral Bank yes­ter­day, Howai said the Bank would want to dis­cuss its for­eign ex­change ini­tia­tives with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to find out what are the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tions on the mat­ter, which has been hot-but­ton is­sue for many small busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als.

Asked whether the Cen­tral Bank was any clos­er to ar­riv­ing at an eq­ui­table al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change, Howai said, “We want to cal­i­brate what­ev­er we do to en­sure that at both ends, that they’re not mak­ing cer­tain de­ci­sions with re­spect to any ad­just­ment to the Ex­change Con­trol Act that could then throw off what we want to do on our side.”

He said the Cen­tral Bank is in touch with the Min­istry of Fi­nance on an on­go­ing ba­sis, but he re­alised that Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is very tied up with the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee right now. That is ex­pect­ed to be fol­lowed by the bud­get de­bate in the Sen­ate.

“It’s a ques­tion of us be­ing able, at some stage, to sit and ra­tio­nalise ex­act­ly what we want to do, and then we pro­ceed from there. But it’s al­ready been worked out. It has been worked out for some time, but it’s just a ques­tion of how we go about the process now,” the Gov­er­nor said.

He said the Cen­tral Bank al­so wants to con­sult with the au­tho­rised deal­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers, adding that the Bank has a clear un­der­stand­ing of what it wants to do, why it wants to do it, when it wants to do it and how it wants to do it.

“It’s not some­thing that we want to sur­prise any­one with. We want to do it in a way that is well cal­i­brat­ed on all sides, on the is­sue of when you want to do it,” Howai said.

Ques­tioned whether the Cen­tral Bank has a time­frame for im­ple­men­ta­tion of its for­eign ex­change ini­tia­tives, Howai said, “There’s no re­al change in the over­all mar­ket at this stage. So there’s no need for us to bring for­ward or do any­thing dif­fer­ent at this stage.

“So we’re com­fort­able and we can wait un­til we put some (US dol­lar) fund­ing over and above the nor­mal fund­ing in­to the sys­tem to cov­er off some of the short po­si­tions that banks had, and re­duce the over­all ex­po­sure in those ar­eas.”

As a re­sult of some mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed in the past few weeks, the Gov­er­nor said there is no need im­me­di­ate­ly for the Cen­tral Bank to rush to do any­thing.

“The sys­tem is no dif­fer­ent now to where it was three months ago. So I think we can de­ter­mine how we want to pro­ceed and do it in a way that is well co­or­di­nat­ed with all the par­ties in­volved,” he said.

On the is­sue of whether the re­duc­tion in the US-dol­lar spend­ing lim­its on cred­it cards had the ef­fect of re­duc­ing over­all de­mand for for­eign ex­change, Howai said, “I haven’t seen that just yet in the num­bers. Of course, I’d prob­a­bly want to wait an­oth­er few weeks be­cause the da­ta comes in with a lit­tle bit of a lag too.

“So I’m not see­ing any­thing at the mo­ment, but again, it is some­thing that we keep in re­view. And if, of course, if it’s less, it’s it helps in terms of over­all flows, right? But I can’t take any clear po­si­tion at this time. I don’t have the da­ta,” he said.