Sev­er­al busi­ness cham­ber heads want to see the for­eign ex­change cri­sis and oth­er is­sues ad­dressed by new Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai.

Ad­dress­ing Howai’s ap­point­ment yes­ter­day, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said he was pleased to hear that the for­eign ex­change is­sue is high on the new gov­er­nor’s agen­da.

He not­ed that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is ea­ger to learn how the short­age will be dealt with, es­pe­cial­ly for small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs).

“For some time now, we have felt that the dis­tri­b­u­tion has been in­equitable. When we look at im­port-ori­ent­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions, some ap­pear to have no prob­lems with forex ac­cess while oth­ers com­plain bit­ter­ly about in­ad­e­quate sup­ply and re­liance on the black mar­ket,” Singh said.

“We un­der­stand that the gov­er­nor has a small­er sup­ply to dis­trib­ute, giv­en the heavy de­pen­dence on the sale of di­min­ished quan­ti­ties of en­er­gy prod­ucts. De­mand con­tin­ues to out­strip sup­ply. This coun­try im­ports the ma­jor­i­ty of con­sum­ables. Un­til the econ­o­my can find sus­tain­able im­port sub­sti­tu­tion, the sit­u­a­tion is like­ly to re­main un­changed.”

He said the cham­ber ex­pects that the mon­e­tary pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives will be more clear­ly de­fined, not­ing they fore­see a har­mo­nious re­la­tion­ship with the Gov­ern­ment be­cause Howai was a mem­ber of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s last Cab­i­net.

Giv­ing his per­spec­tive on the mat­ter, Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ra­mon Gre­go­rio out­lined the core ex­pec­ta­tions the cham­ber would like to see Gov­er­nor Howai ad­dress.

Gre­go­rio said con­fi­dence is the cur­ren­cy of eco­nom­ic re­silience and one of the most press­ing tasks fac­ing Howai is restor­ing faith in the Cen­tral Bank’s abil­i­ty to guide mon­e­tary pol­i­cy in a trans­par­ent, con­sis­tent, and da­ta-dri­ven man­ner. He said re­cent years have seen a per­ceived drift in clar­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the bank, with busi­ness­es of­ten un­cer­tain about the di­rec­tion of key in­di­ca­tors such as in­ter­est rates, in­fla­tion tar­gets, and cur­ren­cy pol­i­cy.

“We call on Howai to recom­mit the Cen­tral Bank to a clear mon­e­tary pol­i­cy frame­work, with reg­u­lar, ac­ces­si­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors alike. The bank must re­claim its role as a thought leader in eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, is­su­ing time­ly and forth­right re­ports on eco­nom­ic out­looks, risks, and nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tions,” he dis­closed.

Fur­ther, Gre­go­rio said the gov­er­nor must en­sure the Cen­tral Bank re­mains a rig­or­ous pro­duc­er of eco­nom­ic re­search and an­a­lyt­ics, which in­cludes restor­ing con­fi­dence in in­fla­tion met­rics, na­tion­al ac­counts and fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty re­ports.

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers chair­man Vivek Char­ran said the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the forex sit­u­a­tion can­not on­ly rest on Howai’s shoul­ders.

“There is the as­pect of what forex we have com­ing in now, which, at last count, it was said to be 7.9 months of im­port cov­er, right? How is that go­ing to be dis­trib­uted? But oth­er than that, when it comes to the gen­er­a­tion of forex, which is much more crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant, the gen­er­a­tion of forex and forex rev­enues com­ing in­to the coun­try re­al­ly and tru­ly is not up to the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor,” Char­ran point­ed out.

On the oth­er hand, Char­ran said when one talks about the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and the for­eign ex­change that they earn di­rect­ly as pri­vate com­pa­nies, it is their own mon­ey.

“Some­times it’s kept in T&T and oth­er times it’s kept out­side of the coun­try. But it is not mon­ey that the Cen­tral Bank can re­ly up­on to dis­trib­ute to the com­mer­cial banks. The sec­ond thing is that when it comes to ex­ports and man­u­fac­tur­ing, it is a tax levied on ex­ports that the gov­ern­ment can col­lect rev­enues from that would be some­thing that could go in­to the cof­fers of the Gov­ern­ment and the Cen­tral Bank can re­ly up­on to add to what­ev­er rev­enues is com­ing in from the en­er­gy sec­tor to dis­trib­ute to the com­mer­cial banks,” he de­tailed.

Mean­while, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce con­tin­ues to recog­nise the need for en­hanced col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tors and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to strength­en for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, mod­ernise pay­ment sys­tems, and im­prove ac­cess to fi­nance for small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) and emerg­ing in­dus­tries.

“We are, there­fore, en­cour­aged by Gov­er­nor Howai’s strong track record of strate­gic think­ing, stake­hold­er en­gage­ment, and com­mit­ment to good gov­er­nance,” the cham­ber said in a state­ment.

The cham­ber added that it looks for­ward to “con­struc­tive en­gage­ment” with Howai and the Cen­tral Bank as it col­lec­tive­ly works to en­sure that mon­e­tary pol­i­cy re­mains an en­abling force for sus­tain­able na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Howai took up of­fice yes­ter­day, with a guard of ho­n­our be­ing pre­sent­ed to wel­come him. He re­placed for­mer gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire, who was fired by the Gov­ern­ment ear­li­er this week.