The pub­li­ca­tion of the Ex­im­Bank’s for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tions and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment that leg­is­la­tion will be brought to Par­lia­ment be­fore the end of the year to al­low the Cen­tral Bank of T&T to re­veal all for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tions have raised con­cerns but some busi­ness­men be­lieve this se­quence has prompt­ed a nec­es­sary dis­cus­sion about the is­sue.

In a phone in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian on Fri­day, the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) said he ap­pre­ci­at­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s plan, as he be­lieved it would ad­dress the sec­tor’s un­equal dis­tri­b­u­tion.

He felt the leak of the Ex­im­Bank list raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about the al­lo­ca­tion process.

“I want to ap­plaud the Prime Min­is­ter for ask­ing for this list to be pub­lished, be­cause I have a se­ri­ous con­cern with it. This could be a covert way for peo­ple to di­vert mon­ey to oth­er busi­ness­es. Be­cause the Ex­im­Bank was sup­posed to be giv­en funds for nec­es­sary things dur­ing the COVID-19 time. It has just nev­er stopped, but it has ex­pand­ed now when times are nor­mal,” said Bab­wah, who ex­plained that he had no is­sues with the es­sen­tial list, which in­clud­ed food and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies.

How­ev­er, he did ques­tion whether some of the man­u­fac­tur­ers on the list war­rant­ed their al­lo­ca­tion.

“The drug com­pa­nies and the food com­pa­nies are get­ting this ad­di­tion­al forex to im­port food. No prob­lem. I have no is­sues with that, but it is a fa­cil­i­ty that is ex­tend­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ers al­so. And if we man­u­fac­tur­ers get ad­di­tion­al forex to man­u­fac­ture and ex­port, they should be bring­ing back forex in­to the coun­try,” said Bab­wah.

“ I would like to call on the Cen­tral Bank to show us some form or doc­u­ment or what­ev­er it is they have to present that says how much they are bring­ing back in­to the coun­try.”

Last Wednes­day, while speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, chair­man of the con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers, Vivek Char­ran echoed a sim­i­lar con­cern that some sec­tors re­mained at a high­er pri­or­i­ty, and felt the coun­try was due an ex­pla­na­tion con­cern­ing such a de­ci­sion.

“What we’ve seen dur­ing that COVID pan­dem­ic time is that the Gov­ern­ment had de­ter­mined that there was go­ing to be a pri­or­i­ty list for im­ports, or pri­or­i­ty goods that were high­light­ed, or that were sup­posed to have pri­or­i­ty ac­cess to forex. And then there were man­u­fac­tur­ers and so on. Af­ter the pan­dem­ic that con­tin­ued, and it con­tin­ued to the ex­clu­sion of many oth­er types of busi­ness­es, de­spite the fact that food im­ports were no longer a prob­lem. It was not go­ing to be a sit­u­a­tion where we couldn’t feed our cit­i­zens be­cause of the lo­gis­tics dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and ship­ping. Sim­i­lar­ly, with things like phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. But it con­tin­ued and it re­mained in place,” Char­ran said dur­ing that in­ter­view.

He said the coun­try has been long over­due an hon­est dis­cus­sion about the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion, as he felt the coun­try had been “gaslight­ed” about the is­sue for many years.

“It’s not about at­tack­ing a busi­ness. It’s about putting the in­for­ma­tion out there to dis­pel myths and dis­pel ru­mours and to stop the gaslight­ing, which is, are we in a Forex cri­sis? I think we are. I think there is def­i­nite­ly a short­age of forex out there. Is there a prob­lem with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of forex? I would say yes that there is. And I think the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the small and medi­um busi­ness sec­tor, would say there is.”

Char­ran al­so not­ed that see­ing this list added frus­tra­tion for sev­er­al SMEs who are strug­gling to get nec­es­sary sup­ply to stock up be­fore the busy Di­vali and Christ­mas shop­ping pe­ri­ods.

He al­so ques­tioned the claim that the list­ing of these com­pa­nies could cre­ate se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, as most of the com­pa­nies list­ed were al­ready known as large, suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es.

“Most of the com­pa­nies that have been list­ed are huge com­pa­nies. There’s no one per­son list­ed. But if the sys­tem as a whole has been at­tacked be­cause of its in­tegri­ty, if the sys­tem as a whole has lost cred­i­bil­i­ty and peo­ple are los­ing con­fi­dence in the sys­tem, then, how do we bring back con­fi­dence in the sys­tem?” said Char­ran.

Bab­wah ar­gued this point by re­fer­ring to the fact that these com­pa­nies of­ten di­vulged sim­i­lar in­for­ma­tion in re­ports car­ried in the me­dia.

“Peo­ple like to cov­er un­der this veil of se­cre­cy that this should not be pub­lished, you put the peo­ple at risk. Now, these same com­pa­nies, a lot of these same com­pa­nies, when they ac­quire oth­er busi­ness­es, they are hap­py to put it in a news­pa­per. They have ac­quired a new busi­ness. Their prof­it has risen, “ said the TTA­DA pres­i­dent, “I don’t see a prob­lem with the Ex­im­Bank pub­lish­ing this, be­cause peo­ple need to be ac­count­able for what they are do­ing with the forex of T&T. We need to un­der­stand that when they are giv­en some­thing for a pur­pose, it should be used for that pur­pose.”

Bab­wah al­so felt that the re­lease of the list, as well as the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor’s rev­e­la­tion that the au­to­mo­bile sec­tor had slipped down the lad­der in terms of con­sump­tion, con­firmed his long held be­lief that car deal­ers had been un­just­ly tar­get­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. He used it to fur­ther his call for trans­paren­cy.

“They tar­get­ted us by cut­ting our quo­tas and do­ing every­thing they could have done to get us out of busi­ness. But the facts and the fig­ures are here now to show that we are not the largest con­sumers of forex in this coun­try, and they must take note of that. Our sales have gone down be­cause we have a lim­it­ed amount of cars that we could im­port in­to the coun­try. And we al­ways kept say­ing that,” said Bab­wah.

“So it is very, very re­fresh­ing that the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor came out and made this de­c­la­ra­tion. It is very in­ter­est­ing now to see how those who op­pose the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try how they will re­spond to these claims, be­cause these are the facts, and that is why we need to have trans­paren­cy and not cher­ry pick­ing of cer­tain in­for­ma­tion.”

How­ev­er Vyash Nand­lal, a for­mer eco­nom­ic ad­vis­er in the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, raised ques­tions as to whether the Ex­im­Bank list did ac­tu­al­ly re­veal the true pic­ture con­cern­ing the for­eign ex­change short­age.

In a so­cial me­dia post, he not­ed that the Ex­im Bank’s es­sen­tial forex win­dow, which was pub­li­cised, amount­ed to no more than US$360 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly and ac­count­ed for six per cent of all forex sales in T&T.

He not­ed that, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank’s sta­tis­tics, the top five al­lo­ca­tions of forex for 2020–2024 were:

• Cred­it card cen­tre – US$8.9 bil­lion;

• Re­tail and dis­tri­b­u­tion – US $5.2 bil­lion;

• En­er­gy com­pa­nies – US $3.6 bil­lion;

• Man­u­fac­tur­ing – US $1.7 bil­lion; and

• Au­to­mo­bile com­pa­nies – $1.3 bil­lion.

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