Vin­ode Mam­chan

A de­ci­sion on where the fi­nals of the 2016 Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 tour­na­ment will be played will be made this week and T&T's for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion re­mains a ma­jor fac­tor in the equa­tion.

CPL of­fi­cials are de­mand­ing US $1M in US cur­ren­cy but the T&T Gov­ern­ment is adamant that all con­tri­bu­tions will be paid in T&T dol­lars be­cause of the coun­try's short sup­ply of US dol­lars.

The gov­ern­ment al­so wants its con­tri­bu­tion to pay as many lo­cal bills as pos­si­ble, so that less mon­ey will leave the coun­try. It is un­der­stood that CPL is ask­ing for US $4.5M to award the fi­nals week­end to any of the Caribbean coun­tries.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions are con­tin­u­ing but there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that the or­gan­is­ers will re­ject the T&T cur­ren­cy and play the fi­nals at an­oth­er venue.Guyana is still in the mix as is Fort Laud­erdale, where the last round of match­es will be played.

Sources say the or­gan­is­ers could eas­i­ly ask the fi­nal four qual­i­fiers to stay on for a few ex­tra days in Broward to play the fi­nals. A source close to the sit­u­a­tion told Guardian Me­dia that a de­ci­sion has to be made by the end of this week.

Ac­cord­ing to the source: "The gov­ern­ment is try­ing all that is rea­son­able to bring the fi­nals to T&T but at the same time they want to make sure they do the right thing and use the op­por­tu­ni­ty of stag­ing the fi­nals to as­sist the lo­cal econ­o­my even if it is for a short time."

Ini­tial­ly Guyana was named as the venue for the fi­nals as part of their 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions.

How­ev­er, the T&T Gov­ern­ment asked the CPL own­ers for a chance to make a re­vised bid.Last year, T&T paid US $3.5M to host the event for the sec­ond time in the three-year his­to­ry (the oth­er venue be­ing St Kitts and Nevis). Ini­tial­ly T&T re­fused to pay US$4.5M to host the match­es and in­stead, of­fered US $1.5M which was turned down.