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Thursday, July 31, 2025

Hilaire: CBTT trying to keep forex market calm

by

Andrea Perez-Sobers
273 days ago
20241031
Central Bank, Governor, Dr Alvin Hilaire, right, with Bank of Jamaica Governor, Richard Owen Byles, from left, TTSE chairman, Ian Narine, Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Brian Manning and Bank of Guyana Governor, Dr Gobind Nauth Ganga, during the TTSE Capital Market Conference at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Central Bank, Governor, Dr Alvin Hilaire, right, with Bank of Jamaica Governor, Richard Owen Byles, from left, TTSE chairman, Ian Narine, Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Brian Manning and Bank of Guyana Governor, Dr Gobind Nauth Ganga, during the TTSE Capital Market Conference at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr. Alvin Hi­laire said there is an im­bal­ance in this coun­try's for­eign ex­change mar­ket, but the bank is do­ing its best to meet the de­mands.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the T&T Stock Ex­change Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day, Hi­laire said while there is an im­bal­ance in this coun­try's for­eign ex­change mar­ket, it is nei­ther new nor has it been ex­ac­er­bat­ed.

“What we have been do­ing to keep calm in the mar­ket is to sell ap­prox­i­mate­ly about US$50 mil­lion every two weeks which is not triv­ial. This year we sold over US$1 bil­lion on the mar­ket.

“We al­so sup­ple­ment that by pro­vid­ing a liq­uid­i­ty guar­an­tee fa­cil­i­ty to the com­mer­cial banks. So, in oth­er words, when the banks are ex­tend­ing them­selves a lot in trad­ing, they can get a spe­cial amount, with­in the lim­its of the cen­tral bank. Last year, it was about US$92 mil­lion that banks got ex­tra in­ter­ven­tion from the Cen­tral Bank and this year so far it is about US$75 mil­lion. This year we have about US$ in in­ter­ven­tion. We are talk­ing about 100 mil­lion per month," the gov­er­nor ex­plained.

Over the past few days, there have been con­cerns ex­pressed by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that they are un­able to bring in goods due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change, which some busi­ness­men are say­ing can lead to pos­si­ble food short­ages.

Hi­laire in­di­cat­ed that while he has heard about this, there is no ev­i­dence thus far about a short­age of food.

Asked about the small and medi­um-size busi­ness­es ex­press­ing con­cern about the lack of forex, which can lead to a clo­sure of their busi­ness­es, the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor said, “I have heard that, and it would be wor­ri­some if it was ac­tu­al­ly to oc­cur. I do not have the ev­i­dence per say, but I have heard that peo­ple are com­plain­ing that they are get­ting dif­fi­cul­ty, and it may have been ex­ac­er­bat­ed over time. As I said we do our part and in­ter­vene, we pro­vide a lot of for­eign cur­ren­cy.”

Asked whether he re­ceived the let­ter from Ram­saran's Dairy Prod­ucts (RDP) own­er and founder Ra­j­nanan Ram­saran about the lack of in­for­ma­tion on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of forex, Hi­lar­ie said he had not seen the let­ter as he was out of the coun­try last week for the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund's (IMF) au­tumn meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton DC.

On Tues­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, in a news re­lease, said that the for­eign ex­change win­dow opened by the Ex­im Bank for whole­sale im­porters of ba­sic foods and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was a tem­po­rary ini­tia­tive.

Im­bert said, "The ad­di­tion of a sec­ond forex win­dow at the Ex­im Bank for es­sen­tial im­ports dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic can­not cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion where, four years lat­er, the Gov­ern­ment is be­ing held li­able by cer­tain pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness­men for the items they or­dered and re­ceived with­out pay­ing for them.

Lat­er on that day, in a so­cial me­dia post, the min­is­ter said, “The Ex­im Bank was es­tab­lished to fa­cil­i­tate the growth and ex­pan­sion of our ex­port and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors; to en­hance our for­eign ex­change earn­ings and cre­ate em­ploy­ment through as­sis­tance to our EX­PORT­ING com­pa­nies and NOT to fa­cil­i­tate whole­salers of im­port­ed fin­ished prod­ucts."


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