Analysts call for exchange rate review

With the Gov­ern­ment prepar­ing to de­liv­er its na­tion­al bud­get next week Mon­day, amid per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­ages, econ­o­mists and a busi­ness leader are urg­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers to con­front one of the coun­try’s most dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic ques­tions: whether the T&T dol­lar re­mains ap­pro­pri­ate­ly val­ued.

While some have called for an ob­jec­tive as­sess­ment of the ex­change rate, busi­ness­es warn that de­val­u­a­tion alone would not re­solve the chron­ic short­age of US dol­lars and could in­stead in­crease the cost of food, med­i­cine and oth­er es­sen­tial im­ports.

Econ­o­mists Dr Ronald Ramkissoon, Mar­la Dukha­ran and for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Sel­by Wil­son ar­gue that the is­sue de­serves se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion as busi­ness­es and house­holds con­tin­ue to face dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy through the of­fi­cial bank­ing sys­tem, while an ac­tive par­al­lel mar­ket per­sists.