News

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves is hoping that Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) can work together to solve the currency issue currently affecting Vincentian agricultural traffickers.

The issue is that local traffickers who move farm produce between T&T and SVG are paid in Trinidadian currency. That currency is not accepted or exchanged in SVG and the other territories.

The Prime Minister said that this country purchases approximately US$60 to US$65 million worth of goods and services annually from T&T, but despite this fact, the approximately US$4 million needed by business people in T&T to pay Vincentian farmers is not being addressed by the T&T government.

He said that as a result, statistics now show that SVG’s agricultural exports to the twin island republic has moved, from about EC$20 to $22 million in 2015 to about US$4 million in the past few years.

“A little earlier, we used to sell nearly double that (EC$20 to $22 million) and we used to get in the earlier period, the requisite foreign exchange….But bit by bit, the foreign exchange problem became more challenging in Trinidad, very challenging…” Prime Minister Dr. Gonsalves said.

A few years ago, the SVG government brokered a deal that allowed traffickers to get their money through the local Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (BOSVG) from the First Citizens Bank in T&T through wire transfers.

However, four weeks into the deal, traffickers were told that the bank could no longer accommodate the transfers unless they had a bank account with First Citizens.

The requirements to join the Trinidad bank cannot be met by most traffickers as they are not citizens of T&T. Traffickers reported that the bank requested utility bill and other documentation that a local trafficker cannot produce because they are not Trinidadians.

The Government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines later created a process at BOSVG where traffickers were able to exchange the T&T money but that later crashed as the influx of T&T money became an issue.

“We used to try and solve it, you know…we had the Bank of Saint Vincent buying up a certain amount of the TT dollars, but they began to have so much TT dollars, they couldn't do anything with the money...,” Dr. Gonsalves said.

“We pay in hard foreign currency for visible exports from Trinidad, mainly petroleum products and manufactured goods. But our sister CARICOM country cannot find less than a miserly US$4 million in foreign exchange to pay for our agricultural products,” the PM said.

Dr. Gonsalves said that he is hoping that the issue can soon be solved in an effort to once again increase the trade of agricultural produce between the two countries.

SOURCE: The Agency for Public Information (API)