By Ria Taitt

Copyright trinidadexpress

Former finance minister Colm Imbert yesterday accused the United National Congress of seeking to destroy banking confidentiality in Trinidad and Tobago.

“Confidentiality is essential in banking to protect sensitive financial data from unauthorised access or misuse, to safeguard clients’ privacy and safety and prevent identity theft, fraud and kidnapping for ransom,” he said.

The Sunday Express revealed the list of foreign exchange users who received funds from EximBank.

On Monday, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said the Government intends to introduce legislation allowing the Central Bank to disclose all forex allocations.

She accused EximBank of failing to operate fairly and claimed commercial banks were acting as forex cartels.

Former minister in the ministry of finance Brian Manning, however, agreed with Central Bank Governor Larry Howai, stating that no cartel existed.

“There isn’t a forex cartel. Our foreign exchange issue is that the demand for foreign exchange outstrips the supply. That’s it. There’s no cartel,” he said.

Manning said he did not understand why the Prime Minister would go out of her way to villainise the country’s business community.

“If our business community is unable to receive foreign exchange, then they will not be able to employ people. And this will create even more unemployment in the country that the Prime Minister has already created herself, (via the firings in CEPEP, URP, reforestation etc), “ he said.

Manning said EximBank was established to provide foreign exchange to businesses that were themselves earning foreign exchange.

He said that most recipients of foreign exchange from the bank were manufacturers.

Manning said that companies, such as pharmaceutical firms supplying essential products, also receive foreign exchange from EximBank.

“Without drugs, people will die,” he said.

“So it wasn’t like there was any cartel that companies that were actually earning foreign exchange were being given preferential treatment in receiving foreign exchange. And the EximBank was used to manage that entire process. I don’t think the Prime Minister actually understands what the EximBank is or what it was used for,” Manning said.

He said the Government does not want to acknowledge that some of the country’s largest businesses are also its biggest employers.

“And if they don’t get the opportunity for foreign exchange, what we will have is mass unemployment and that will create real problems,” Manning stated.

He claimed the Government is determined to portray a non-existent forex cartel as a threat, despite it being widely known that no such cartel exists.

“Where is the evidence of a cartel? There’s no evidence of a cartel. We have a foreign exchange issue we have in this country—demand for foreign exchange outstrips supply. And I think the Prime Minister then has gone out of her way to cancel every single revenue-generating project that the previous government had, including the opening of the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery and the Dragon deal which would have added significant foreign exchange to the supply and the country would not be having the issues it has going into the short and medium term. What the Prime Minister and the Government have done is to put extreme pressure on our exchange rate and they are leading us towards a devaluation,” Manning stated.