Click to view full size

At the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on May 15, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that three of her min­is­ters—Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dra­dath Tan­coo, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Kennedy Swarats­ingh and Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment, and Tourism, Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj—were man­dat­ed to pro­duce a re­port on for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion and leak­age over the past ten years.

The Prime Min­is­ter em­pha­sised that she ex­pect­ed the re­port to fo­cus on the for­mal dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem of for­eign ex­change, but al­so on the “leak­age” of for­eign ex­change from the for­mal dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, which she de­scribed as “a se­ri­ous mat­ter.”

She said one of the cries the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has heard is on the is­sue of for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty. As a re­sult, said Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Gov­ern­ment needs to know where the for­eign ex­change went, who re­ceived the for­eign ex­change, why they re­ceived it, the process used to de­ter­mine who re­ceived for­eign ex­change, and how that for­eign ex­change was used or de­ployed.