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In T&T’s on­go­ing de­bate over for­eign ex­change ac­cess, two com­pet­ing frame­works have emerged: Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s five-point plan, aimed at re­form­ing and stream­lin­ing forex dis­tri­b­u­tion, and the Cen­tral Bank’s decades-old ho­n­our sys­tem, which re­lies on com­mer­cial banks to al­lo­cate for­eign cur­ren­cy with fair­ness and dis­cre­tion.

While the ho­n­our sys­tem has his­tor­i­cal­ly de­pend­ed on trust and in­for­mal pri­ori­ti­sa­tion—favour­ing trade, med­ical ex­pens­es and tu­ition—the five-point plan sig­nals a shift to­ward struc­tured ac­count­abil­i­ty, propos­ing tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions that in­clude ed­u­ca­tion, health­care and small busi­ness sup­port.

Tan­coo’s pro­pos­als were re­ceived with mea­sured op­ti­mism.