Forex crunch hits back-to-school shopping

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

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The new school term has opened un­der the shad­ow of for­eign ex­change short­ages, with lo­cal book­sellers warn­ing that lim­it­ed ac­cess to US dol­lars is leav­ing fam­i­lies strug­gling to se­cure text­books.

Kelvin Nizam Khan, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Ish­mael M Khan & Sons, one of the coun­try’s longest-stand­ing text­book sup­pli­ers, said the crunch has left shelves thin­ner than usu­al.

“For­eign ex­change has been very tight, so bring­ing in text­books has been dif­fi­cult,” Khan told the Guardian. “There’s some short­age. Who have, have, and who didn’t and couldn’t… we just weren’t sure what to bring in this year.”

He ex­plained that late cur­ricu­lum changes and lin­ger­ing ef­fects of COVID-19 made it dif­fi­cult for book­sellers to an­tic­i­pate de­mand.

“No­body could tell us whether we’re chang­ing or not chang­ing, and we just couldn’t take the chance to or­der be­cause you didn’t have enough for­eign ex­change. So, we car­ried what we could have,” Khan said.

The short­age adds to the fi­nan­cial strain on par­ents al­ready grap­pling with back-to-school costs for uni­forms, sta­tionery, and trans­port.

De­spite the chal­lenges, Khan ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the com­pa­ny’s loy­al cus­tomers, cred­it­ing their sup­port with help­ing the busi­ness weath­er tough times.

“I am very thank­ful for all our loy­al cus­tomers who have come here through every­thing and sup­port­ed us,” he said. “Things have been very dif­fi­cult this year for a lot of peo­ple. With COVID, it got dif­fi­cult for us, for every­body. We are try­ing to pull our­selves out, and all our cus­tomers are the ones who re­al­ly help us get out of it.”

Mean­while, the cap­i­tal city was alive with ac­tiv­i­ty this week­end as par­ents and chil­dren flocked to shoe stores, sta­tionery shops, and book­stores in a last-minute rush to pre­pare for the new term.

In Port-of-Spain, re­tail­ers re­port­ed steady crowds and strong sales, de­scrib­ing the back-to-school pe­ri­od as one of the busiest times of the year.

Na­dia Seenath, a sales clerk at De­tour Stores, said the rush is dri­ven less by pro­cras­ti­na­tion and more by pay cy­cles.

“It’s very busy right now. It’s very con­sis­tent, so we are glad for that,” Na­dia said, sur­round­ed by shelves stacked with school shoes in every size.

“I don’t think it’s about peo­ple lik­ing last minute. It’s how they get paid. No­body with mon­ey will wait till last minute to shop, so you know.”

De­spite the crunch, Na­dia said her store was well-pre­pared, of­fer­ing a wide se­lec­tion of durable footwear for fam­i­lies.

The new school term of­fi­cial­ly be­gins to­mor­row.