The Ex­im­bank’s fail­ure to achieve its full man­date may have con­tributed to the dis­missal of Navin Dook­er­an as Ex­port Im­port Bank of T&T Ltd (Ex­im­bank) CEO.

Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh said the de­ci­sion was ul­ti­mate­ly up to the board, and he had lit­tle knowl­edge con­cern­ing the de­ci­sion to re­move Dook­er­an last Fri­day.

“What I can tell you is that the Ex­im­bank is in need of re­vamp­ing. Be­cause, as you know, the for­mer gov­ern­ment used the Ex­im­bank for a num­ber of things, in­clud­ing in­creas­ing the cat­e­gories of things that can be used or ac­cessed through the Ex­im­bank. So dur­ing COVID, they would have put in an es­sen­tial cat­e­go­ry that they would have kept on even af­ter COVID. So Ex­im­bank was in need of up­dat­ing and has to be up­dat­ed,” said Swarats­ingh when asked about Dook­er­an’s re­moval out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.