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For­mer MP Rush­ton Paray says while he un­der­stands the frus­ta­tion that has dri­ven the call by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce for a mar­ket-dri­ven ex­change rate, he has warned that the low­er class will take the longest and most sig­nif­i­cant hit if such a mea­sure is in­tro­duced.

The for­mer Ma­yaro MP said in a post to so­cial me­dia, “There is al­so the so­cial di­men­sion. De­val­u­a­tion is re­gres­sive. Low­er in­come house­holds spend a high­er share of in­come on food, trans­port and ba­sic ser­vices. When prices rise, they feel it first and longest. Coun­tries that man­age de­val­u­a­tion suc­cess­ful­ly re­ly on strong, tar­get­ed trans­fer sys­tems to cush­ion the im­pact. Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port mech­a­nisms are un­even and slow. With­out rapid in­ter­ven­tion, the cost of ad­just­ment shifts di­rect­ly on­to house­holds.”

On Fri­day the Cham­ber is­sued a po­si­tion pa­per urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion which had reached a break­ing point. The pa­per ar­gued that the cur­rent ex­change-rate regime has led to TT dol­lar be­ing over­val­ued for more than a decade.