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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Manning: New car industry largest forex user in T&T

by

Chester Sambrano
275 days ago
20241008
Minister in the Ministry of Finance Brian Manning speaks during the Budget debate in Parliament yesterday.

Minister in the Ministry of Finance Brian Manning speaks during the Budget debate in Parliament yesterday.

COURTESY: OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The new car in­dus­try has been la­belled as the largest con­sumer of for­eign ex­change in this coun­try by Min­ster in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning.

Min­is­ter Man­ning’s rev­e­la­tion came dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2024/2025 Bud­get de­bate in the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

In ad­dress­ing the is­sue of for­eign ex­change, Man­ning said cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go in many ways are vic­tims of their own suc­cess.

“We hear this all the time about what is the Gov­ern­ment do­ing about pro­tect­ing for­eign ex­change, Madam Speak­er do you know what is the largest con­sumer of for­eign ex­change in Trinidad and To­ba­go? It is new mo­tor ve­hi­cles, Madam Speak­er.”

He said peo­ple need to un­der­stand where they are as a coun­try.

“So Trin­bag­o­ni­ans want ac­cess to new ve­hi­cles and they want cheap fu­el but they don’t want any traf­fic and they don’t want any of the neg­a­tives that come out from this. You want ac­cess to for­eign ex­change but you al­so want lux­u­ry food items which de­plete for­eign ex­change ,even though we need that for­eign ex­change for es­sen­tial items,” Man­ning ex­plained.

He added that in any econ­o­my there must be give and take, so when some­thing is done in one sec­tor, it af­fects an­oth­er.

“We have to be knowl­edge­able and in­formed about how ex­act­ly we are deal­ing with the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go and as I said ear­li­er, this Gov­ern­ment in the past decade has been both rea­son­able and re­spon­si­ble in man­ag­ing the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

In terms of this coun­try’s 7.3 bil­lion dol­lar food im­port bill, Man­ning said no mat­ter what kind of tar­iffs the Gov­ern­ment puts on lux­u­ry food items, the food im­port bill con­tin­ues to rise.

In De­cem­ber 2015, then-Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran was fired af­ter he re­vealed de­tails of the biggest for­eign ex­change users in the coun­try.

How­ev­er, in Oc­to­ber 2022, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad ruled that Ram­bar­ran should re­ceive $5.47 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for be­ing wrong­ful­ly dis­missed by the Gov­ern­ment.


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