Central Bank, Tobago Chamber discuss forex, business priorities

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go met with the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce on Tues­day as part of on­go­ing con­sul­ta­tions with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty across the coun­try.

The meet­ing, held at the Cham­ber’s of­fices in Scar­bor­ough, was led by Deputy Gov­er­nor Dr. Do­ri­an Noel and Cham­ber Chair­man Cur­tis Williams, along with mem­bers of the Bank’s man­age­ment team and the Cham­ber’s ex­ec­u­tive.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank, the dis­cus­sions fo­cused on To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic pri­or­i­ties and the chal­lenges fac­ing busi­ness­es on the is­land. Top­ics in­clud­ed the do­mes­tic econ­o­my, bank­ing ser­vices, for­eign ex­change ac­cess and fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy.

Noel thanked the Cham­ber for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage di­rect­ly with To­ba­go’s busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives and ac­knowl­edged the is­land’s “dis­tinct eco­nom­ic voice and pri­or­i­ties.”

The Cham­ber al­so raised in­ter­est in ob­tain­ing more da­ta from the Cen­tral Bank to help To­ba­go busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es, bet­ter un­der­stand To­ba­go’s con­tri­bu­tion to the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

Fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy was an­oth­er ma­jor area of dis­cus­sion, with Cham­ber rep­re­sen­ta­tives sup­port­ing the Bank’s ef­forts to im­prove pub­lic un­der­stand­ing of fi­nan­cial mat­ters and build busi­ness ca­pac­i­ty in To­ba­go.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives were al­so up­dat­ed on the pro­posed Draft Pay­ment Sys­tems and Ser­vices Bill and ac­com­pa­ny­ing reg­u­la­tions, which are cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions across the coun­try. Tues­day’s con­sul­ta­tion marked the sec­ond ses­sion held in To­ba­go.

Dis­cus­sions al­so cov­ered re­gion­al and do­mes­tic pay­ment ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing the CARI­COM Pay­ments Set­tle­ment Sys­tem (CAPSS) and the coun­try’s In­stant Pay­ment Sys­tem (IPS).

Williams said the Cham­ber wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to part­ner with the Bank in de­vel­op­ing the pay­ments sec­tor and en­cour­ag­ing busi­ness­es to po­si­tion them­selves to ben­e­fit from planned changes to the na­tion­al pay­ments land­scape.

The Bank al­so re­vealed that work is con­tin­u­ing on its new five-year Strate­gic Plan for 2026 to 2031 and in­vit­ed the Cham­ber to pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions for con­sid­er­a­tion dur­ing the plan­ning process.

The Cen­tral Bank said feed­back from To­ba­go stake­hold­ers would help shape fu­ture poli­cies and en­sure To­ba­go’s in­ter­ests are re­flect­ed in the na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem.