The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has called for ur­gent, col­lec­tive ac­tion to ad­dress the coun­try’s wors­en­ing for­eign ex­change cri­sis, warn­ing that in­ac­tion is no longer a vi­able op­tion for the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

In a me­dia re­lease dat­ed De­cem­ber 19, the Cham­ber said it had is­sued a com­pre­hen­sive po­si­tion pa­per out­lin­ing the scale, caus­es and po­ten­tial so­lu­tions to the for­eign ex­change short­age, which it de­scribed as a na­tion­al­ly recog­nised chal­lenge af­fect­ing busi­ness­es of all sizes, house­holds and the coun­try’s long-term de­vel­op­ment prospects.

The Cham­ber said per­sis­tent short­ages, grow­ing un­cer­tain­ty and widen­ing mar­ket dis­tor­tions are un­der­min­ing busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, weak­en­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence and con­strain­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.