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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Will Larry comply with Kamla’s forex disclosure demands?

by

Anthony Wilson
19 days ago
20250626

Lar­ry Howai is one of the peo­ple in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor who I hold in high re­gard, hav­ing re­port­ed on him since his ap­point­ment as the CEO of the First Cit­i­zens Group in 1997 and dur­ing his ser­vice as min­is­ter of fi­nance and the econ­o­my from Ju­ly 2012 to Sep­tem­ber 2015.

Hav­ing served as the CEO of what is now T&T’s sec­ond-largest com­mer­cial bank and as a min­is­ter of fi­nance, he brings a unique per­spec­tive to his new role as gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T. I can not think of any oth­er Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor who has his com­bi­na­tion of pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ence. Mr Dook­er­an has served as both Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor and as min­is­ter of fi­nance, but he did not have Mr Howai’s in­ti­mate knowl­edge of the in­nards of com­mer­cial bank­ing.

Mr Howai has al­so served on di­verse boards in T&T in­clud­ing as chair­man of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and its sub­sidiary Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion. He serves as a di­rec­tor of ANSA McAL, hav­ing been ap­point­ed to that board in 2016. He al­so cur­rent­ly serves as a di­rec­tor of ANSA Mer­chant Bank, Trinidad and To­ba­go In­sur­ance (Tatil), Tatil Life As­sur­ance, Al­lied Ho­tels and Al­lied Innkeep­ers Ltd. ANSA McAL is the par­ent com­pa­ny of Guardian Me­dia Ltd.

Mr Howai’s back­ground is cru­cial in un­der­stand­ing his ap­point­ment as T&T‘s Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor, as my im­pres­sion of him is that he had a clear un­der­stand­ing of the laws that dic­tat­ed his role as min­is­ter of fi­nance in its re­la­tion­ship with the Cen­tral Bank. But it is al­so my im­pres­sion that he un­der­stands chain-of-com­mand is­sues and if he is giv­en a clear di­rec­tive by his boss­es—cur­rent Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dra­dath Tan­coo and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar—he will com­ply...if the di­rec­tive is le­gal.

It is clear to me that in se­lect­ing Mr Howai for the po­si­tion of Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is hop­ing that he ac­cedes to the Gov­ern­ment’s re­quest for com­pa­ny-spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion on the top users of for­eign ex­change.

Re­call that at the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on May 15, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar man­dat­ed that three of her min­is­ters pro­duce a re­port on for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion and leak­age over the past ten years.

That re­port, ac­cord­ing to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, would re­veal “where the for­eign ex­change went, who re­ceived the for­eign ex­change, why they re­ceived it, the process used to de­ter­mine who re­ceived for­eign ex­change, and how that for­eign ex­change was used or de­ployed...

“Then this re­port, as I say, will be made pub­lic to iden­ti­fy the main users, the main fa­cil­i­ta­tors of this un­fair dis­tri­b­u­tion, and ex­plain to the pub­lic how this en­tire for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion car­tel and con­spir­a­cy be­tween cer­tain op­er­a­tives and busi­ness­es was func­tion­ing,” said the T&T Prime Min­is­ter.

As point­ed out in this space pre­vi­ous­ly, the on­ly pos­si­ble rea­son for the ex­po­sure of what T&T’s prime min­is­ter de­scribes as “this un­fair dis­tri­b­u­tion” of for­eign ex­change by the “the for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion car­tel” is to es­tab­lish grounds to re­verse what she said is the “con­spir­a­cy be­tween cer­tain op­er­a­tives and busi­ness­es.” This would ob­vi­ous­ly mean re­duc­ing the amount of for­eign ex­change sold to the largest users of for­eign ex­change and in­creas­ing the amount sold to every­body else.

Be­yond a cer­tain per­cent­age, per­haps 20 per cent, re­duc­ing the amount of for­eign ex­change sold to T&T’s largest users of for­eign ex­change is go­ing to hurt T&T’s big non-en­er­gy earn­ers of for­eign ex­change. That is be­cause T&T’s largest non-en­er­gy pur­chasers of for­eign ex­change are ei­ther among the coun­try’s top non-en­er­gy ex­porters or among the top im­porters of es­sen­tial foods and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

In my view, con­fir­ma­tion of the prime min­is­ter’s in­ten­tion, an­nounced on May 15, came a lit­tle over one month lat­er on June 18, when Mr Tan­coo, out­lined the es­tab­lish­ment of a For­eign Ex­change Al­lo­ca­tion Com­mit­tee and oth­er mea­sures to ad­dress per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­ages in his con­tri­bu­tion to the Mid-Term Bud­get Re­view de­bate:

“We will col­lab­o­rate with the nec­es­sary stake­hold­ers to es­tab­lish a For­eign Ex­change Al­lo­ca­tion Com­mit­tee to bring greater trans­paren­cy, eq­ui­ty, and strat­e­gy to the al­lo­ca­tion of scarce for­eign ex­change re­sources;

“We will be im­ple­ment­ing re­port­ing oblig­a­tions for high-vol­ume im­porters to en­sure that for­eign cur­ren­cy in­flows and out­flows are bet­ter mon­i­tored and aligned with the coun­try’s na­tion­al strate­gic eco­nom­ic pri­or­i­ties;

“We will en­sure en­hanced in­vestor con­fi­dence through the de­vel­op­ment of prof­it repa­tri­a­tion pro­to­cols, div­i­dend safe­guards, and in­vest­ment pro­tec­tion frame­works draw­ing on the best prac­tices such as those that have been im­ple­ment­ed in Bar­ba­dos; and

“We’ll ex­plore for­eign cur­ren­cy tax ex­emp­tions and in­vest­ment tax cred­its as tools to en­cour­age re­ten­tion and rein­vest­ment of for­eign ex­change with­in the lo­cal econ­o­my.”

The es­tab­lish­ment of the For­eign Ex­change Al­lo­ca­tion Com­mit­tee in­vites ques­tions:

* Who are the nec­es­sary stake­hold­ers that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to col­lab­o­rate with in set­ting up the For­eign Ex­change Al­lo­ca­tion Com­mit­tee?

* Would that col­lab­o­ra­tion in­clude the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of T&T and the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T?

* Would mem­bers of those pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies be in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the com­mit­tee?

* Does the Gov­ern­ment need a com­mit­tee to know that com­pa­nies that are earn­ing for­eign ex­change should be giv­en high­er pri­or­i­ty than those com­pa­nies that want to buy for­eign ex­change sim­ply to sell for­eign goods on the do­mes­tic mar­ket?

* Is the Gov­ern­ment not aware that the on­ly way to en­sure greater trans­paren­cy and eq­ui­ty in the al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change is by al­low­ing the ex­change rate to float in a man­aged way and that “re­mov­ing all re­stric­tions on cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions and greater ex­change rate flex­i­bil­i­ty over the medi­um term would help meet the de­mand for for­eign ex­change,” ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion main­ly with the T&T’s Cen­tral Bank and Min­istry of Fi­nance?

Will Mr Howai com­ply?

As stat­ed above, my im­pres­sion of Mr Howai is that he is not a law­break­er or a law­ben­der.

The code of cen­tral bankers, gen­er­al­ly, is se­cre­cy. The Cen­tral Bank Act is clear that, for T&T, the re­quire­ment is that all em­ploy­ees of the Cen­tral Bank main­tain se­cre­cy.

This is spelt out in sec­tion 56, which states:

“ (1) Ex­cept in so far as may be nec­es­sary for the due per­for­mance of its ob­jects, and sub­ject to sec­tion 8 of the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act, every di­rec­tor, of­fi­cer and em­ploy­ee of the Bank shall pre­serve and aid in pre­serv­ing se­cre­cy with re­gard to all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the af­fairs of the Bank, any fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion or per­son reg­is­tered un­der the In­sur­ance Act or of any cus­tomers there­of that may come to his knowl­edge in the course

of his du­ties.

(2) Any such di­rec­tor, of­fi­cer or em­ploy­ee who com­mu­ni­cates any such mat­ter to any per­son oth­er than the Board or an of­fi­cer of the Bank au­tho­rised in that be­half by the Gov­er­nor or suf­fers or per­mits any unau­tho­rised per­son to have ac­cess to any books, pa­pers or records re­lat­ing to the Bank, any fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, or per­son reg­is­tered un­der the In­sur­ance Act, is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion there­of to a fine of $6,000 and to im­pris­on­ment for two years.

(3) No di­rec­tor, of­fi­cer or em­ploy­ee of the Bank shall be re­quired to pro­duce in any Court any book or doc­u­ment or to di­vulge or com­mu­ni­cate to any Court any mat­ter or thing com­ing un­der his no­tice in the per­for­mance of his du­ties un­der this Act ex­cept on the di­rec­tion of the Court or in so far as may be nec­es­sary for the pur­pose of car­ry­ing in­to ef­fect the pro­vi­sions of this Act, or for the pur­pos­es of any crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

(4) Where the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al or the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions ap­plies to a Court, in­clud­ing the Spe­cial Tri­bunal, and the ap­pli­ca­tion is sup­port­ed by a cer­tifi­cate signed by the Gov­er­nor that ev­i­dence prej­u­di­cial to the fi­nan­cial sys­tem or to the se­cu­ri­ty of the Bank may be ad­duced in the course of a hear­ing be­fore the Court, the Court may or­der that the hear­ing or any part there­of be held in cam­era....”

In short, Mr Howai faces prison time if he di­vulges the top users of for­eign ex­change in a com­pa­ny-spe­cif­ic way, which is clear­ly what Prime Min­is­ter wants.

The on­ly way to com­pel a Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor to di­vulge the top users of for­eign ex­change would be to amend the Cen­tral Bank Act. Will they?


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