Central Bank visits Tobago – Trinidad Guardian

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai took the Bank’s se­nior lead­er­ship to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) last Fri­day, sharp­en­ing fo­cus on To­ba­go-spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy and clos­ing long-stand­ing da­ta gaps that have con­strained plan­ning.

In a news re­lease, the Cen­tral Bank said Howai, deputy gov­er­nor Dr Do­ri­an Noel, the board, and se­nior man­age­ment met Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and As­sem­bly mem­bers as part of on­go­ing stake­hold­er en­gage­ments, with par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to To­ba­go’s dis­tinct needs. The vis­it co­in­cid­ed with the Bank’s April board meet­ing in To­ba­go.Talks ranged from fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and dig­i­tal-pay­ments mod­erni­sa­tion to the macro­eco­nom­ic out­look and tighter in­sti­tu­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The Bank sig­nalled readi­ness to pro­vide re­search and sta­tis­ti­cal sup­port to the THA to strength­en eco­nom­ic mod­el­ling, an in­ter­ven­tion aimed at im­prov­ing ev­i­dence-based pol­i­cy­mak­ing on the is­land.

Of­fi­cials al­so ad­dressed for­eign ex­change de­vel­op­ments and the do­mes­tic out­look, while not­ing To­ba­go’s mi­cro-econ­o­my is more nu­anced than Trinidad’s and of­ten re­quires tai­lored pol­i­cy re­spons­es.

Ac­cess to fi­nance fea­tured promi­nent­ly. The par­ties dis­cussed the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank’s loan fa­cil­i­ty for small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es and how it can be bet­ter lever­aged by To­ba­go’s pri­vate sec­tor.
On fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion, both sides agreed to deep­en co­or­di­na­tion. The Bank said it will move to re-es­tab­lish the Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Ed­u­ca­tion Com­mit­tee and align its Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy Pro­gramme with the THA’s Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy Sec­re­tari­at. The Bank’s Va­ca­tion In­tern­ship Pro­gramme for To­ba­go-based uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents will con­tin­ue.

The THA al­so sig­nalled sup­port for the Cen­tral Bank’s pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the draft Pay­ment Sys­tems and Ser­vices Bill and ac­com­pa­ny­ing reg­u­la­tions. An in-per­son con­sul­ta­tion ses­sion is sched­uled for To­ba­go in May.

Look­ing ahead, the Bank out­lined pri­or­i­ties over the next six to 12 months, in­clud­ing roll­out of its 2026–2031 strate­gic plan, in­tro­duc­tion of new se­ries 2026 $100 ban­knotes fea­tur­ing the up­dat­ed Coat of Arms in Au­gust, and ex­pand­ed su­per­vi­so­ry work, in­clud­ing the pi­lot­ing of Su­per­vi­so­ry Tech­nol­o­gy (SupTech) and on­go­ing AML com­pli­ance en­hance­ments.

Howai said the en­gage­ment was “can­did and for­ward-look­ing,” adding, “The work we are do­ing on be­half of the peo­ple of To­ba­go is de­lib­er­ate and on­go­ing.”