Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is adamant that the Gov­ern­ment will not be float­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Dol­lar.

His state­ment, which came via his X page, was in re­sponse to a Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle to­day, in which the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) is quot­ed as say­ing that T&T’s for­eign ex­change re­stric­tions are not con­sis­tent with the Fund’s Ar­ti­cles of Agree­ment.

The Wash­ing­ton DC-based lender of last re­sort is seek­ing to per­suade this coun­try to end the re­stric­tions. The com­ment from the IMF, which was ex­clu­sive to Guardian Me­dia, fol­lows a pe­ri­od of height­ened con­cern about for­eign ex­change sup­ply con­straints in T&T.

How­ev­er, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter put out a tweet this morn­ing in re­sponse.

“We are not in an IMF pro­gramme. We will not be float­ing the dol­lar at this time be­cause we know how this will ad­verse­ly af­fect the vul­ner­a­ble and cause mas­sive in­fla­tion. We have said this for the last 10 years,” he said.

Last week, Im­bert said he will be meet­ing with stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss a new sys­tem to de­ter­mine how forex can be dis­trib­uted by com­mer­cial banks.