UNC Senator: Businesses breaking law to get Forex to survive

Gail Alexan­der

The ma­jor­i­ty of busi­ness­peo­ple are break­ing the law just to get for­eign ex­change need­ed to sur­vive, says UNC Sen­a­tor Da­mian Ly­der.

“ … And that must be bolt­ed to the chest of this PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion!” Ly­der added in yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate of the 2023 Bud­get.

Among crit­i­cism of the Bud­get, Ly­der promised when the UNC re­turns to of­fice they “… will re­move that dread­ed prop­er­ty tax.”

Ly­der said a ma­jor is­sue con­cern­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness is the un­avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change.

“With the ex­cep­tion of the Ex­im­bank ini­tia­tive meant to ben­e­fit a small num­ber of ex­porters and a se­lect group of im­porters, the Gov­ern­ment has done lit­tle or noth­ing to mit­i­gate against the dif­fi­cul­ty and in most cas­es, the im­pos­si­ble task of ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change by pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly small and medi­um busi­ness­es,” he said.

Ly­der said every busi­ness own­er in T&T “can at­test to it be­ing a night­mare to ac­cess for­eign ex­change just to sur­vive.”

“I, as a busi­ness­man, have to open ac­counts with five dif­fer­ent bank­ing in­sti­tu­tions just to get a sup­ply of for­eign ex­change. Even then it is in­suf­fi­cient.”

He said there are many busi­ness­es that have to re­sort to buy­ing for­eign ex­change on the black mar­ket at ex­or­bi­tant prices.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, this rais­es the cost of items such as food, build­ing sup­plies, cloth­ing and ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties. Whilst at the same time, it places these busi­nessper­sons at risk of break­ing the law,” he said.

“As we know, it’s il­le­gal to pur­chase for­eign ex­change from an unau­tho­rised deal­er. As such, I put it to this Sen­ate that the ma­jor­i­ty of busi­nessper­sons are break­ing the law just to get forex need­ed to sur­vive…”

Ly­der said Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters’ state­ments on the Bud­get, “… dis­played com­plete and ut­ter dis­con­nec­tion to cit­i­zens’ con­cerns and the re­al is­sues im­pact­ing the qual­i­ty of their lives.”

“The re­sponse from most sec­tors of the pop­u­lace is this is a bud­get doesn’t bode well for the econ­o­my … even the now em­bat­tled Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi, on TV6, stat­ed the Bud­get will cause dis­com­fort to the peo­ple.”

Ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of be­ing dis­re­spect­ful to cit­i­zens, Ly­der con­demned Gov­ern­ment state­ments on “every­body wants every­thing for noth­ing” about “rid­ing a bi­cy­cle and us­ing a coal pot” and to not “eat mac­a­roni pie.”

Ly­der slammed Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc­Clashie’s state­ment that “‘it’s not my job to give you a job.”

“It’s not his job alone but the job of every mem­ber on the gov­ern­ment side that they cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for cit­i­zens to have jobs,” Ly­der said, adding Mc­Clashie showed he “threw his col­leagues un­der the bus” when he de­tailed as­pects that go in­to job cre­ation on which Ly­der said Min­is­ters have failed.

“No won­der in the Labour Min­is­ter’s own La Brea con­stituen­cy we re­cent­ly saw protests for jobs and the Min­is­ter re­spond­ing that ‘there isn’t a whole lot of work go­ing on’—an ad­mis­sion of com­plete fail­ure.”