Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says he will hold dis­cus­sions in the near fu­ture with the Cen­tral Bank, the com­mer­cial banks and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the caus­es and ef­fect of in­creased de­mand for for­eign ex­change.

The meet­ing, the Min­is­ter said, will al­so fo­cus on strate­gies to deal with the cur­rent chal­lenges, "and the most ap­pro­pri­ate pol­i­cy for the al­lo­ca­tion, man­age­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign cur­ren­cy, as well as strate­gies to in­crease the repa­tri­a­tion of forex earned over­seas by lo­cal busi­ness­es and for­eign busi­ness op­er­at­ing in T&T."

Im­bert said the is­sue was not on­ly about the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change this year com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, but al­so one of de­mand.

He point­ed to sta­tis­tics that show in 2023, the sales of for­eign ex­change to the pub­lic for the first eight months of the year is 26.8% high­er than the same pe­ri­od in 2021 and 4.3% high­er than the same pe­ri­od in 2019.

Im­bert said there are sev­er­al rea­sons for the in­creased de­mand in­clud­ing the growth in the econ­o­my, which he says is dri­ving this in­creased de­mand as busi­ness­es seek to ex­pand their op­er­a­tions, and im­port equip­ment, raw ma­te­ri­als, and fin­ished prod­ucts. He said there has al­so been an "ex­plo­sion" in on­line shop­ping over the last sev­er­al years, which is dri­ving up the us­age of US dol­lar de­nom­i­nat­ed cred­it cards, as con­sumers take ad­van­tage of the avail­abil­i­ty of cheap­er goods over­seas.

There is al­so the ques­tion of im­port­ed in­fla­tion in­creas­ing the unit cost of im­port­ed items.

The Min­is­ter al­so at­trib­uted the prob­lem to the repa­tri­a­tion of for­eign ex­change earned through ex­port earn­ings, which reached a high in 2022, but which is de­creas­ing, as some busi­ness­es are choos­ing to keep their forex over­seas, for var­i­ous rea­sons.