Soyi­ni Grey

Busi­ness groups say Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert needs to fig­ure out how to make the process for ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change (forex) for busi­ness pur­pos­es more trans­par­ent.

He is al­so be­ing urged to treat with the lo­cal de­sire for for­eign foods and goods. Busi­ness­men are say­ing it’s not that they are as­sured that their ap­pli­ca­tions are ex­am­ined fair­ly; it is al­so that they are com­pelled to buy for­eign goods to sat­is­fy lo­cal tastes.

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said it was look­ing for­ward to the meet­ing with Im­bert to dis­cuss im­prov­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of forex.

Pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj said the meet­ing was “a step to­ward col­lab­o­ra­tive so­lu­tions and shar­ing each oth­er’s in­sights.”

She added, “The cham­ber is of the view that the coun­try needs strate­gies for the short, medi­um, and long term be­cause the sit­u­a­tion is frag­ile and needs the in­put of all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion and busi­ness sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tions, to come up with a sus­tain­able so­lu­tion.”

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh, said that while they wel­come col­lab­o­ra­tion, the key is the coun­try’s ex­pen­sive for­eign palate.

“We have un­for­tu­nate­ly been spoilt by the high rev­enues we would have gen­er­at­ed over the years from oil and gas,” he said.

“Our ap­petites have been flavoured by the for­eign prod­ucts that you see in the me­dia, and we want to pur­chase those foods even though they are ex­or­bi­tant­ly high.”

Singh said the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber sup­ports lo­cal goods and prod­ucts and be­lieves en­cour­ag­ing con­sumers to seek out lo­cal al­ter­na­tives is an ex­treme­ly im­por­tant long-term so­lu­tion.

Mean­while, Bal­dath Ma­haraj of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce agrees there is a ben­e­fit in mak­ing con­sumers more will­ing to buy lo­cal; he sug­gest­ed there might be scope to in­cen­tivise man­u­fac­tur­ing so that lo­cal goods could bet­ter com­pete qual­i­ty-wise with im­port­ed goods, mak­ing it eas­i­er for con­sumers to choose them.

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj felt a pri­or­i­ty was the need to lift the lid on the process of ac­quir­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing forex. He al­lud­ed to his mem­bers hav­ing a slight feel­ing of dis­trust that their re­quests aren’t ex­am­ined fair­ly, es­pe­cial­ly by the banks.

“We do not know what the cri­te­ria is,” he said.

Ma­haraj said busi­ness­men com­plained about not be­ing sure what to put in their re­quests to guar­an­tee a favourable out­come. If in­vit­ed to the con­sul­ta­tions, his group would ad­vo­cate for a sys­tem that makes the process more open to scruti­ny.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon said the dis­tri­b­u­tion of forex should not move to a sys­tem that cre­ates new prob­lems while not ac­cu­rate­ly ad­dress­ing the root of the prob­lem.

“We are not earn­ing enough forex through ex­ports, and we are high­ly im­port-in­ten­sive,” he said.

“Once forex sup­ply re­mains the same, the gap will con­tin­ue to ex­ist.”

Ar­joon point­ed out po­ten­tial blind spots in how ap­pli­ca­tions from busi­ness­es might be treat­ed.

“Will they re­ceive al­lo­ca­tions from each bank, po­ten­tial­ly lim­it­ing ac­cess for oth­ers?” he asked.

The busi­ness cham­bers wel­comed con­sul­ta­tions to find a so­lu­tion to the prob­lem. They warned against cre­at­ing new prob­lems so that ac­cess to forex can be rea­son­ably and sus­tain­ably im­proved.