GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Kennedy Swarats­ingh has chal­lenged Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor’s as­ser­tion that there is no ev­i­dence of a for­eign ex­change car­tel, say­ing the lack of proof does not guar­an­tee one does not ex­ist.

Swarats­ingh, who al­so holds the min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio of Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, yes­ter­day of­fered a con­trast­ing view to Lar­ry Howai’s claim of last week.

He sug­gest­ed to Guardian Me­dia that Howai’s per­spec­tive was per­haps lim­it­ed to “what he’s see­ing at this time” and that a more com­pre­hen­sive view, in­clud­ing oth­er in­for­ma­tion and his­tor­i­cal con­text, is nec­es­sary to ful­ly as­sess the sit­u­a­tion.

“The rea­son why I sus­pect the gov­er­nor would have sug­gest­ed that in­for­ma­tion, is based on what he’s see­ing at this time, but that is not all the in­for­ma­tion that there is to that. That is not all the in­for­ma­tion that we would have had over the pe­ri­od of time,” Swarats­ingh said.

How­ev­er, at a me­dia en­gage­ment last Thurs­day at the Cen­tral Bank, Howai said, “From our per­spec­tive, we have no ev­i­dence of a car­tel.”

His state­ments ap­peared to be at odds with that of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that there is a for­eign ex­change “car­tel” op­er­at­ing in T&T.

The Prime Min­is­ter had de­scribed the process of ob­tain­ing in­for­ma­tion like a “bed of thorns or pulling teeth,” re­in­forc­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s be­lief that an un­fair and non-trans­par­ent forex sys­tem is at play.

To ad­dress these con­cerns, the Prime Min­is­ter man­dat­ed a re­port on the forex dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem to iden­ti­fy and ex­pose the main fa­cil­i­ta­tors of an al­leged car­tel.

Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on May 15, Per­sad-Bisses­sar man­dat­ed three of her min­is­ters to pro­duce a re­port on for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion and leak­age over the past 10 years.

“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,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said then.

How­ev­er, when asked for an up­date on the progress of the re­port, Swarats­ingh de­scribed the doc­u­ment as a “com­pre­hen­sive thing.”

“I can’t dis­cuss that with you be­cause again, that’s a com­pre­hen­sive thing that will en­com­pass and the Gov­er­nor will re­al­ly be the one, the per­son to speak on that...I would not be the cor­rect per­son to speak on that,” he added.

Guardian Me­dia al­so sent sev­er­al mes­sages to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo re­gard­ing Howai’s state­ments of no ev­i­dence of a forex car­tel but the min­is­ter did not re­spond.