OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

A call from the T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) for greater trans­paren­cy from lo­cal cor­po­ra­tions op­er­at­ing in the au­to­mo­tive sec­tor, in­sist­ing that the pub­lic has a right to know the facts be­hind ma­jor de­ci­sions im­pact­ing con­sumers.

TTA­DA pres­i­dent Visham Bab­wah and vice-pres­i­dent Rhon­dall Fee­les made the call in re­sponse to the re­cent re­lease by the Ex­im­Bank of com­pa­nies us­ing for­eign ex­change.

Bab­wah ar­gues that re­al ev­i­dence must guide the pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion.

“A lot of peo­ple have com­plaints about this list be­ing pub­lished, say­ing it will put peo­ple at risk. I don't see it so. Trans­paren­cy is very im­por­tant,” Bab­wah stat­ed. “These same peo­ple who are com­plain­ing, I am sure they are glad to pub­lish it when they buy a next com­pa­ny … They are pur­chas­ing com­pa­nies abroad. Where are they get­ting the forex?”

He points to the in­vest­ment made by the Ex­im­Bank in ex­port-ori­ent­ed com­pa­nies and ques­tioned how much of the forex those com­pa­nies earned was be­ing ploughed back in­to the T&T econ­o­my.

“The list was ex­pand­ed un­der COVID-19 to com­pa­nies bring­ing in es­sen­tial items at that time,” he re­called.

“With the ex­pan­sion, it could be con­strued or seen as a covert way to give peo­ple forex to do oth­er busi­ness,” the TTA­DA pres­i­dent ob­served. “There are no checks and bal­ances to make sure that this [forex] is go­ing to im­port this prod­uct.”

And TTA­DA vice-pres­i­dent, Rhon­dall Fee­les, al­so agreed that trans­paren­cy is im­por­tant.

He not­ed the con­cerns raised by some quar­ters that shar­ing da­ta might com­pro­mise se­cu­ri­ty, but dis­missed such ar­gu­ments as a smoke­screen.

“When we see the ev­i­dence our­selves af­ter a re­port is done, then we ac­tu­al­ly know what's tak­ing place. Hence the rea­son and hence the proof of my point—this is why trans­paren­cy is im­por­tant,” Fee­les as­serts.

“I hear peo­ple talk­ing about se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, but let us think about it … These very same com­pa­nies, some of them, they de­clare their prof­it mar­gins every year—how many mil­lions in prof­it [they made] ... If se­cu­ri­ty re­al­ly was a ma­jor con­cern, then you wouldn’t be mak­ing these de­c­la­ra­tions as well,” the TTA­DA spokesman point­ed out.

Ac­cord­ing to Fee­les, there must be a prop­er un­der­stand­ing of the coun­try’s con­sump­tion pat­terns to de­ter­mine what is gen­uine and nec­es­sary and where wastage may be hap­pen­ing.

Bab­wah and Fee­les are ex­pect­ed to present a for­mal pro­pos­al to gov­ern­ment in the com­ing weeks, urg­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers to tight­en re­port­ing re­quire­ments for ma­jor play­ers in the in­dus­try.

The TTA­DA spokes­men were guests on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show.