Tancoo: Imbert’s arrogance putting businesses at risk

Colm Imbert’s latest media release (October 29, 2024) is an arrogant dismissal of a major issue confronting local small and medium sized businesses, micro investors and ordinary citizens.

These businesses, already buried under by crime that the Government seems unwilling to confront, facing competition from favored enterprises, and contraband flowing through the borders that PNM policy has left wide open, have braved the risk of abuse and victimization to speak out and seek a viable solution.

Instead of addressing the problem, Imbert chose to preserve his Government’s policy to blame the very persons who have raised the issues. This deflection of responsibility is a hallmark of PNM policy. His colleague, the Minister of National Security, boasted that his job is not to make people feel safe and ironically blamed the national community, who are the victims for this crime spree.

What is required is a mature, truthful and transparent national conversation about the distribution of foreign exchange over the past decade. I challenge the Minister to name the recipients of foreign exchange and the values over the last 10 years and I am certain that the population would see that certain business houses, who have shareholding in banks and finance houses, received the bulk of the billions in foreign exchange, distributed under convenient cover of confidentiality.

It is time to change the Central Bank Act in the interest of public transparency, to provide information about who is getting the foreign exchange and on what basis. Moreover, it should be a concern to all citizens as to why, to date, absolutely no sincere effort has been made to provide a genuine foreign exchange distribution system that is easily accessible and targeted to facilitate Micro, Small and Medium-sized businesses. Recent substantial further reductions in credit card limits have placed these businesses in jeopardy. The Minister is well aware of this and has chosen instead to chastise businesses for speaking out.

Meanwhile, this Government has borrowed billions on the international market and withdrawn over US$2.66 BILLION from the HSF to prop up the foreign exchange reserves and to feed the demand from those preferred recipients, through the Central Bank and commercial banking sector. This is not private money. It belongs to taxpayers who are bearing the burden of harsh and preferential policies to repay these debts.

Imbert’s tendency to attack persons and institutions who raise accountability and transparency issues is distasteful and unacceptable. No one reading his releases will ever believe that his role is to defend and protect the rights of citizens of T&T. The recent personalized attacks on the Auditor General is but one example of bullying that he was called out on by the Nation. Now, while Imbert twiddles his thumbs and attempts to distract by his disingenuous blame games, small and medium-sized businesses are being destroyed. Why, of all persons, is the Minister of Finance afraid of transparency and accountability?