00:00On Sunday, Oropucho West MP Devendranath Thanku gave the opposition's calculation regarding
00:06what the UNC and several business owners are calling a foreign exchange or forex crisis
00:12in Trinidad and Tobago.
00:14Since this government has been in office, 14 billion US dollars has been sold to authorized
00:21dealers and nobody knows what they have done with it.
00:25Nobody knows who they have given it to.
00:28All of this while legitimate clients, legitimate businesses have been made to beg, have been
00:36made to plead for a few hundred US dollars at a time.
00:40Later on Sunday, Finance Minister Colm Imbeth issued a statement via the Finance Ministry
00:45in which he did not make any mention of the opposition, but did provide a calculation
00:51of his own.
00:52The Finance Minister said the special forex window at the Ex-Im Bank for Essential Imports
00:58has consumed US $30 million monthly over the last four years since its inception in 2020.
01:07The Finance Minister made the point as he announced that after careful consideration
01:12and a comprehensive review by the Ministry of Finance and the Ex-Im Bank over the last
01:17month, Cabinet at its regular weekly meeting last week on Friday, November 1st, agreed
01:23to a recommendation from the Finance Minister.
01:27The recommendation, according to the Minister, was that the forex window at the Ex-Im Bank
01:32for Essential Imports, which was created by the Ministry of Finance in 2020 in response
01:37to an urgent and critical need during the COVID-19 pandemic, be resumed in a restructured
01:43format.
01:45Minister Imbeth said the base dataset used for the review was the final list of zero-rated
01:50items that came into effect on February 1st, 2016, by the Value-Added Tax Order 2016, that
01:58is, items not manufactured in Trinidad and Tobago and items not specifically pandemic-related.
02:05The Finance Minister then declared items outside of these definitions should not be considered
02:10essential and should not qualify for preferential access to the government's foreign exchange
02:16through the Ex-Im Bank.
02:18The Finance Minister said it had been decided that the list of foods, pharmaceuticals and
02:23essential hygiene products, such as sanitary napkins and pads, which qualified for this
02:28special forex window from 2020 to September 2024, will remain unchanged going forward.
02:35However, Minister Imbeth said it will be subject to periodic review to see whether, for example,
02:41retaining borderline food items on the margin between essential and non-essential, such
02:46as sausages, is arguable.
02:49The Finance Minister said that, for the avoidance of doubt, COVID-19 pandemic-related items,
02:54such as hand soap, toothpaste, face masks, deodorant, respirators and hand sanitizers,
03:02are no longer considered to be essential imports.
03:05Minister Imbeth said that, in this context, the role and impact of locally manufactured
03:10products which substitute for imports are being carefully examined and greater access
03:15to forex for inputs for local consumption will be considered shortly.
03:21The Finance Minister said the government's allocation of US dollars to the Ex-Im Bank
03:26for this essential imports facility will now be US $25 million per month, a US $5 million
03:34reduction from the COVID-19 list of imports.
03:38Jewel Brown, TV6 News.
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