The elec­tion sea­son is over, even if it may not ap­pear so when one reads the news­pa­pers’ front pages. The key task is to set­tle in­to the re­al­i­ties of of­fice and de­ter­mine the pri­or­i­ties for the next five years. That re­quires an eval­u­a­tion of the ex­ist­ing cir­cum­stances and the fit­ness of the in­sti­tu­tions tasked to ex­e­cute those pri­or­i­ties.

In­evitably, there will be a few skir­mish­es over the de­tri­tus from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. But the bick­er­ing and re­crim­i­na­tion must stop, as this on­ly stokes puerile egos and wastes time and en­er­gy. It is di­vi­sive, de­tracts from the re­al is­sues, and does not en­hance the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the new ad­min­is­tra­tion.

A crit­i­cal les­son to be learnt from the Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion is that you can­not blame the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for­ev­er. The cit­i­zen­ry wants re­sults and will sup­port any po­lit­i­cal par­ty that ap­pears to ad­vance the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

The re­al strength of any ad­min­is­tra­tion is its cred­i­bil­i­ty. An in­com­ing gov­ern­ment with a large mar­gin of vic­to­ry as en­joyed by this new ad­min­is­tra­tion, is ex­pect­ed to achieve much. It has a cush­ion of pop­u­lar sup­port. This good­will will not last for­ev­er and will be grad­u­al­ly erod­ed as ex­pec­ta­tions di­min­ish or promis­es go un­ful­filled. Cred­i­bil­i­ty is built by be­ing re­li­able and con­sis­tent­ly achiev­ing an ac­cept­able lev­el of per­for­mance. How­ev­er, the na­tion’s chal­lenges are not di­min­ished be­cause a new gov­ern­ment has been elect­ed. The im­me­di­ate task is to quick­ly de­ter­mine what promis­es can be kept and which are to be jet­ti­soned.

For­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty is a crit­i­cal is­sue that af­fects every cit­i­zen. It is a crit­i­cal in­put in every area of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and its un­avail­abil­i­ty is slow­ing eco­nom­ic growth. High­light­ing this is­sue was a Re­pub­lic Bank In­ter Of­fice Mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed May 7 en­ti­tled “Card Lim­it For New­ly Is­sued Cred­it Cards.” The Mem­o­ran­dum in­di­cat­ed that the max­i­mum cred­it lim­it on new­ly is­sued cred­it cards would be $500 or its equiv­a­lent. This lim­it would ap­ply to all new cred­it card cus­tomers and all ex­ist­ing cus­tomers who do not have a cred­it card. It ex­plained that this ac­tion was tak­en be­cause of con­tin­ued forex con­straints. Oth­er banks have made sim­i­lar ad­just­ments.

Com­mer­cial banks are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing suf­fi­cient for­eign ex­change to meet their in­ter­na­tion­al pay­ment oblig­a­tions, caused by cus­tomer de­mand. Cut­ting lim­its is a bu­reau­crat­ic mea­sure that can­not solve the prob­lem. Cus­tomers of every per­sua­sion are us­ing their cred­it cards to cir­cum­vent the long, un­ful­filled queues at the banks and to sup­ple­ment their busi­ness for­eign ex­change needs. This is a crit­i­cal mat­ter that must be quick­ly ad­dressed.

The on­ly tools that solve a mis­match be­tween de­mand and sup­ply are mar­ket-de­ter­mined mech­a­nisms. Cur­ren­cies ap­pre­ci­ate and de­pre­ci­ate with nor­mal trade flows, as ex­em­pli­fied by the US dol­lar on in­ter­na­tion­al ex­changes. The com­pli­ca­tion is that T&T’s main ex­ports have de­clined in sync with low­er gas pro­duc­tion and non-en­er­gy sec­tor ex­ports are not grow­ing fast enough to com­pen­sate for the sup­ply mis­match. This is a long-term prob­lem.

Ad­dress­ing the for­eign ex­change short­age is chal­leng­ing be­cause all al­ter­na­tive mea­sures re­quire some pain. De­val­u­a­tion is an im­me­di­ate but re­gres­sive so­lu­tion. Avoid­ing de­val­u­a­tion is an im­per­a­tive of this ad­min­is­tra­tion, as it was for the out­go­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion. An­oth­er al­ter­na­tive is to re­duce the fis­cal deficit, which means cut­ting ex­pen­di­ture and fac­ing neg­a­tive po­lit­i­cal con­se­quences.

Ig­nor­ing the sit­u­a­tion is un­ten­able as it on­ly ex­ac­er­bates the pub­lic angst and in­creas­es the risk of a deep­er de­val­u­a­tion. But one can­not make an omelette with­out break­ing an egg. This is the re­al­i­ty of po­lit­i­cal of­fice.