Hold your hand, FCB

THE EDITOR: While the media headlines concerning the current forex (foreign exchange) crisis have abated, the suffering and inconvenience by citizens and small businesses in accessing foreign currency has not. The disparity and biased distribution by the banking sector in favour of certain business houses continues.

If anything, the crisis has gotten worse. The government is borrowing millions of US dollars to pay loans and interest, burying the country under even greater debt.

With no new revenue-generating sources to repay the debts they are piling on the backs of citizens, it is only a matter of time before the government, through Finance Minister Colm Imbert, again raids the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund (HSF) or announces a fire sale of taxpayer-owned assets.

As always, the government has blamed citizens for its own repeated failures to develop import substitution by stimulating local manufacturing and agricultural production. We import nearly all the basic food items we consume simply because the agricultural sector, which fed the country during covid19, has been victimised by the government's bias to certain big businesses.

It is obvious that Imbert and his colleagues are happy with the current status quo in which PNM friends, family and financiers have easy access to foreign exchange at the cost of small and medium-sized businesses and average citizens. The foreign exchange crisis affects every citizen in the form of increasing prices of goods and services that we all pay for.

While there is clear polarisation of business into a few hands and businesses collapse causing job loss, Imbert has been twiddling his thumbs.

For more than a year we have been hearing that Imbert was having conversations with various stakeholders including the commercial banks. Obviously those "conversations" have failed. Commercial banks have continued to slash access to foreign exchange via credit cards, with access to over-the-counter cash almost impossible except for favoured customers.

One bank that has not yet done so is the taxpayer-owned First Citizens Bank. However, I am advised that FCB is currently in discussions with the very same Minister Imbert to engage in further restrictions and increased fees.

As a tax-paying citizen, I urge the PNM-appointed board of directors of FCB not to follow the model of the privately owned banking sector. Your clients are also your shareholders who ultimately are the citizens of TT.

I challenge FCB's executive management to think outside the box, and to develop a transparent, unbiased system of allocation of foreign exchange, which the Minister of Finance refuses to do.

In the national interest, hold your hand, FCB. The country deserves better.

CARRIE ANNA DAFLAG

Westmoorings