Nadaleen Singh

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran says there is a "mis­con­cep­tion" about the role of the bank in sup­ply­ing the mar­ket with US for­eign cur­ren­cy, not­ing it does not sup­ply 100 per cent of the mar­ket's need.Com­ment­ing on com­plaints from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty about the cur­rent prob­lems in ac­cess­ing US cur­ren­cy, Ram­bar­ran said the Cen­tral Bank on­ly sup­plies the mar­ket with 25 per cent of the for­eign ex­change.

The re­main­der comes from the pri­vate sec­tor, in­clud­ing com­mer­cial banks and the en­er­gy sec­tor, he told the T&T Guardian.He said the Cen­tral Bank has al­ready re­leased US$360 mil­lion for the year, so he could not un­der­stand why sec­tions of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty are com­plain­ing about the sup­ply of for­eign cur­ren­cy at com­mer­cial banks.

Ram­bar­ran said in a tele­phone in­ter­view, "There is a US$1.3 bil­lion gap be­tween the de­mand and the sup­ply of for­eign ex­change and this is where the com­mer­cial banks need to step in. We now sup­ply US$1 bil­lion to bridge that gap."If the sys­tem as a whole has funds or is liq­uid, then it may sug­gest one or two fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in the sys­tem may not have enough funds to meet im­me­di­ate de­mands."

Busi­ness­es have been com­plain­ing in re­cent weeks of be­ing un­able to ac­cess for­eign ex­change, with some of them point­ing out that for­eign com­pa­nies are now cagey about do­ing busi­ness with them be­cause of un­cer­tain­ty over whether they will be able to pay their bills.The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce, Amer­i­can Cham­ber, Su­per­mar­kets' As­so­ci­a­tion and Food Dis­trib­u­tors As­so­ci­a­tion have all pub­licly com­plained about the short­age.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai is call­ing for the Cen­tral Bank to meet with the com­mer­cial banks in a bid to find out the source of the prob­lem. He said there are more for­eign-ex­change buy­ers than sell­ers in T&T.