Tancoo slams forex ‘honour system’ and pledges transparent reform

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the “ho­n­our sys­tem” for forex dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­mot­ed by the last gov­ern­ment has not worked to the ben­e­fit of the econ­o­my or the small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.

Last Thurs­day, dur­ing a Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire was re­fus­ing to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion on the top users of for­eign ex­change in this coun­try.

Tan­coo told Guardian Me­dia, “We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue to do busi­ness like this, and we will not. What I can as­sure the pop­u­la­tion of is that what­ev­er ac­tion we take as a gov­ern­ment to en­sure a more trans­par­ent, eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion and al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change will be the re­sult of sig­nif­i­cant re­search and pub­lic and pri­vate con­sul­ta­tion.”

The min­is­ter not­ed that it is ob­vi­ous too that this Gov­ern­ment needs to in­crease the sup­ply of for­eign ex­change, and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) man­i­festo points in the di­rec­tion of the de­vel­op­ment of a sig­nif­i­cant non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

“Even as we try to re­sus­ci­tate the en­er­gy sec­tor, which the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Stu­art Young and oth­ers ef­fec­tive­ly scut­tled be­cause of its one-point­ed fo­cus on the Drag­on gas deal, to­day our for­eign ex­change earn­ings are reel­ing be­cause of those hor­ren­dous deals, those hor­ren­dous se­cret deals, in­clud­ing to shut down Petrotrin, which was a sub­stan­tial rev­enue earn­er of for­eign ex­change,” Tan­coo added.

The Cen­tral Bank, re­spond­ing to com­ments made by the Prime Min­is­ter on re­veal­ing the top for­eign ex­change earn­ers, said it was lim­it­ed when it comes to the dis­clo­sure of cer­tain in­for­ma­tion.

The bank said, “The Cen­tral Bank Act is clear on the lim­its of our pub­lic dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion sub­mit­ted to us. At the same time, in our nor­mal course of busi­ness, the Gov­er­nor and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance dis­cuss and share con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion and in­sights on many mat­ters in the na­tion­al in­ter­est.”