Jensen La Vende 

Se­nior Re­porter 

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt 

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves ays his com­ment that T&T cur­ren­cy is like “mo­nop­oly mon­ey” was tak­en out of con­text, and he will be send­ing a copy of his speech to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.  

He says he has no is­sues with the peo­ple of T&T.

On Tues­day, Mooni­lal, speak­ing at an en­er­gy sym­po­sium, crit­i­cised Gon­salves’ com­ments and called them un­help­ful. He fur­ther ac­cused Gon­salves of re­main­ing silent when the for­mer gov­ern­ment “mis­man­aged the econ­o­my.” 

But dur­ing a ra­dio pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Gon­salves said he was not at­tack­ing the coun­try and his com­ment was a by-the-way re­mark, high­light­ing a larg­er is­sue of for­eign ex­change. 

“From the re­port which I saw, it’s clear that he didn’t get all what I said. And I’ll send him a copy of my speech. And I be­lieve that he and his gov­ern­ment will help me to work out this prob­lem be­cause there’s a prob­lem. And I be­lieve (Prime Min­is­ter) Kam­la (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) will help to work out the prob­lem too. But I think, well, they’re just in of­fice,” Gon­salves said. 

Gon­salves added that Mooni­lal’s com­ment that he did not raise the is­sue with Dr Kei­th Row­ley when he was prime min­is­ter is not true, as (Gon­salves) has been speak­ing on forex is­sues be­tween the coun­tries as far back as 2018. 

“I have raised this thing over and over. You’ve heard me about this more than one time. I want to re­fer to a speech that I made on Feb­ru­ary 22nd, 2018, at the Min­istry of Fi­nance con­fer­ence room called Some Salient Is­sues for Res­o­lu­tion in Cari­com. This is just be­fore I was go­ing off to a meet­ing of Cari­com lead­ers in Haiti.” 

Gon­salves added that his 2018 speech called on this coun­try to set aside forex to pay farm­ers, but to date, the is­sue per­sists. 

The long-stand­ing leader said his com­ments were not an at­tack against the coun­try and the pop­u­la­tion should not view it as such. 

“But re­al­ly, I want the mat­ter solved, among oth­ers too. All the is­sues I spoke about then. I raised them this year, I raised them re­cent­ly. But this speech didn’t get the pub­lic­i­ty be­cause in that speech, I didn’t use the throw­away line. I don’t have a prob­lem with the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”