Guyana’s Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo says Trinidad and Tobago businesses have found a solution to the prolonged foreign exchange shortage in their homeland by buying their imports through Guyana and shipping them to the neighbouring Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country.
“We notice a trend here is that some Trinidadian companies are procuring large quantities of goods for their businesses in Guyana and in Trinidad and making payments from here to their suppliers, so they are utilising our foreign currency to make those payments,” Jagdeo told a news conference.
Trinidad and Tobago has experienced a chronic shortage of foreign exchange since 2014, with Finance Minister Colm Imbert saying recently that the oil rich twin island republic is experiencing a foreign exchange shortage, not a crisis.
Earlier this year, a staff mission from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it was encouraging the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank to remove all restrictions on current international transactions as a means of creating a more investment-friendly business environment that would drive the diversification of the Trinidad and Tobago economy.
