00:00And this is frightening. What this means is that there is no official policy that
00:05deals with the allocation of foreign exchange to businesses and individuals.
00:09Nothing that guides the Central Bank on how to determine how much and whom to
00:15give. Hundreds of millions of foreign exchange distributed every year.
00:19West MP Divenjana Thangku speaking during the opposition's media
00:23conference on Sunday as he displayed what he identified as the Finance
00:27Ministry's response to a letter from the attorney of the owner and founder of
00:31Ramsaram Dairy Products on the distribution of foreign exchange in
00:35Trinidad and Tobago. It's already extremely troubling. What makes it even worse?
00:40It's a massive level of foreign borrowing that this government has been
00:44engaged in so that they can continue to feed their favourite firms. Literally
00:49borrowing billions of US dollars on the international market with no way of
00:55paying it back simply to facilitate the foreign exchange cabal. This is the PNM
01:03government that shut down Petro Trin, a large net foreign exchange owner, so that
01:07they can offer the country the mirage of Dragon Gas. However this was MP Thangku's
01:13response to a question during the opposition's media conference on Sunday
01:17about one newspaper editorial's suggestion on how to deal with the forex
01:22I think that floating the exchange rate requires some conditionalities which
01:27does not exist in Trinidad and Tobago and as a result of that it is inappropriate. I think it is
01:34wrong at this point in time to even consider going that way. In fact if you
01:38focus on what I have said during my contribution this morning, the problem may
01:42not just be the lack of will, the lack of new revenue sources.
01:49The opposition MP said it may not just be a problem in terms of the supply of foreign exchange.
01:55The problem is in terms of transparency. Maybe if there's a transparent, fair and equitable
02:02distribution of the existing foreign reserves that the country has and owns,
02:06we will not have a situation of the crisis that we are currently in.
02:10On Sunday, Finance Minister Colm Imbert posted a statement on X in which he said
02:17The Guardian recommended that we float the TT dollar, that is, devalue the TT dollar as a
02:23solution to the demand for US dollars. However, this helps no one except those
02:28hoarding US dollars to make a quick profit. It will not generate any extra US
02:34dollars for businesses and will just cause hardship and pain.
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