Local ‘Traffickers’ lose big because of T&T currency issue

St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) currently purchase between US $60 to US$65 million worth of goods and services annually from Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). However, due to the foreign exchange crunch in that southern neighbouring country, Vincentian agricultural traders, commonly referred to as traffickers, have been selling far less on that market, and some have even gone out of business.

At a press conference last Friday, July, 11, 2025, Prime Minister, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, said despite the level of imports T&T the authorities there cannot provide approximately US$4 million to pay Vincentian traffickers for agricultural produce sold on that market.

Statistics now show that SVG’s agricultural exports to the two island republic has moved from an estimated $22 million in 2015, to about US$4 million in the past few years.

“A little earlier, we used to sell nearly (EC$20 to $22 million) and we used to get- in the earlier period- the requisite foreign exchange,” the Prime Minister explained.

“But bit by bit, the foreign exchange problem became more challenging in Trinidad, very challenging.”

He outlined that the issue is that local agricultural traders who move farm produce between SVG and T&T are paid in Trinidad currency, which is is not accepted or exchanged in SVG.

To solve this problem, traffickers purchased goods- mostly aerated beverages- in T&T brought them into St Vincent and the Grenadines, sold them, and paid the farmers from whom they had credited produce. That worked for a while.

However, on January 1, 2016, the Customs Department in SVG implemented Article 164 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, thereby introducing a 70% tariff on wheat or meslin flour, aerated beverages, beers, stouts, aerated waters, and other types of waters that originate from More Developed Countries (MDCs) inside CARICOM.

The tariff, according to several persons, severely affected the local traffickers, and in some instances crippled their business.

The SVG government later intervened and after negotiations, announced that they had brokered a deal which would allow traffickers to get their money through the Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (BOSVG). Everything was fine at that point and traffickers were able to deal with the First Citizens Bank in T&T and get their money through the BOSVG by wire transfer.

However, four weeks into the deal, when traffickers went to First Citizens in T&T, they were told that the bank could no longer do the transfers unless they had a bank account with First Citizens. Most traffickers could not meet the requirements to join the bank- including providing such items as electricity bills- as they were not citizens of T&T. Some people even took letters from BOSVG to Trinidad, but those letters were not acknowledged, neither were local utility bills, birth papers or identification cards, the Prime Minister explained.

The government later set up a process at BOSVG where traffickers were able to exchange the T&T money, but that later was abandoned as the influx of the T&T currency became an issue.

“We used to try and solve it, you know… we had the Bank of St 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.

At the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Assembly held in SVG in June, 2025, Dr Gonsalves expressed frustration over this and other issues, and referred to the T&T currency as ‘Monopoly Money’. This drew a sharp rebuttal from the Trinidad and Tobago Minister of Energy, Dr Roodal Moonilal who said, “It is a pity he did not share his thinking with the former administration over the last decade which could have reversed this crisis with prudent management and enhanced investments in the energy sector”.

Dr Gonsalves argued at the OECS meeting, “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? This is absolutely unfair and ridiculous. Our traders are paid in TT dollars, which are not convertible outside of Trinidad and Tobago.”

At the press conference last Friday, Dr Gonsalves said it is good that the issue is back in the news, and that it would not have been a topic if he had not used the term “Monopoly Money”.

He pointed out that SVG pays for its goods from T&T, in hard cash- US dollars.

The Prime Minister said as well that his reference to the T&T currency as ‘Monopoly Money” was not written in his address at the OECS meeting, but attention certainly was paid to the ‘throwaway line’, and people were realising that it is a real problem that SVG’s traffickers face.