WTK how to get currency from our banks

[88sins]

Yes this has become very troubling imagine even if you’re the holder of a US dollar account when you attempt to withdraw the same US you can’t get it

that's frustrating
You give them your US$ to hold, they charge you fees for the account which are far more than the interest earned and then when you want to withdraw your money they tell you it is not available right away.

The Bank will give you the USD .

You just need to tell them and within a few days they will have it ready.

Which Bank giving you the round about turn ?

Not if it's thousands of usd. They are forcing you to cash out in tt if you want physical cash

& this is a serious problem. Right now, the regular commercial banks are useless to most businesses that need USD to conduct their business. You could require as little as USD $4000, is problems. No availability (so they say) so they have limits on forex sales, no large withdrawals, wire transfers, etc.

Quite a few businesses already folded up & shut down operations, I just watching to see what happens when things get really bad. One of the industries that will feel it the hardest is the health care sector, since literally EVERYTHING used in that sector is imported by local companies, from needles & syringes to drugs to medical equipment such as X-ray, CT & MRI film & replacement equipment parts.

[Chimera]

Yup is black market usd to survive.

[88sins]

& the price is high

[thelem-again]

Yes this has become very troubling imagine even if you’re the holder of a US dollar account when you attempt to withdraw the same US you can’t get it

Hence why I closed mine and told them HDMC.

[Country_Bookie]

In addition to the fall in USD earned by the energy sector & rise in demand by ppl & companies looking to repatriate USD; there's a lot more ppl trying to accumulate the actual USD notes. The increase in demand for the actual dollar notes have raised Anti money laundering red flags with the correspondent banks for the local commercial banks. From their vantage point, if tt ppl want more USD either for savings or consumption, they don't need physical cash since u can pay for almost everything in the US with a credit card. But ppl want to hold their USD in physical cash because of lack of confidence; which is making the shortage worse.

[dogg]

I can't even withdraw a few hundred $ from my own U.S. acct..

[regcore]

I can't even withdraw a few hundred $ from my own U.S. acct..

Which bank and did they out right blank you or told you to come back in a few days?

[dogg]

I can't even withdraw a few hundred $ from my own U.S. acct..

Which bank and did they out right blank you or told you to come back in a few days?

FCB, they say they don't have any more for the day. Try tomorrow. Or another branch.

[regcore]

I can't even withdraw a few hundred $ from my own U.S. acct..

Which bank and did they out right blank you or told you to come back in a few days?

FCB, they say they don't have any more for the day. Try tomorrow. Or another branch.

Yea thats FCB for you RBL not far behind. They normally have a cash limit for the day which they distribute as follows in order:

1. 1%
2. clients with the correct last name
3. Friends and family
4. Everybody else

You might have to go line up from 7am to be first in the bank to get ah 2 hunjed

[dogg]

I can't even withdraw a few hundred $ from my own U.S. acct..

Which bank and did they out right blank you or told you to come back in a few days?

FCB, they say they don't have any more for the day. Try tomorrow. Or another branch.

Yea thats FCB for you RBL not far behind. They normally have a cash limit for the day which they distribute as follows in order:

1. 1%
2. clients with the correct last name
3. Friends and family
4. Everybody else

You might have to go line up from 7am to be first in the bank to get ah 2 hunjed

They already start to ask what i want it for, why so much, even though is just a few hundred i wanted... etc, etc
I have to come up with a good reason to get my own money from my bank before i could get it.. yuh think it easy?

[regcore]

I can't even withdraw a few hundred $ from my own U.S. acct..

Which bank and did they out right blank you or told you to come back in a few days?

FCB, they say they don't have any more for the day. Try tomorrow. Or another branch.

Yea thats FCB for you RBL not far behind. They normally have a cash limit for the day which they distribute as follows in order:

1. 1%
2. clients with the correct last name
3. Friends and family
4. Everybody else

You might have to go line up from 7am to be first in the bank to get ah 2 hunjed

They already start to ask what i want it for, why so much, even though is just a few hundred i wanted... etc, etc
I have to come up with a good reason to get my own money from my bank before i could get it.. yuh think it easy?

Always remember bro the banks in trinidad doing us a favor by allowing us to bank with them FCB and RBL master this...

[zoom rader]

I can't even withdraw a few hundred $ from my own U.S. acct..

Which bank and did they out right blank you or told you to come back in a few days?

FCB, they say they don't have any more for the day. Try tomorrow. Or another branch.

Yea thats FCB for you RBL not far behind. They normally have a cash limit for the day which they distribute as follows in order:

1. 1%
2. clients with the correct last name
3. Friends and family
4. Everybody else

You might have to go line up from 7am to be first in the bank to get ah 2 hunjed

They already start to ask what i want it for, why so much, even though is just a few hundred i wanted... etc, etc
I have to come up with a good reason to get my own money from my bank before i could get it.. yuh think it easy?

If it is your money just tell them your wife has do a pu55y operation abroad in a loud voice so others can hear. It works every time they ask me.

[Dave]

Rofl

[zoom rader]

Rofl

Never answer their question as to why you need money. They will try to sell you a loan.

[regcore]

Rofl

Never answer their question as to why you need money. They will try to sell you a loan.

end of the day it is YOUR money not theirs what you want to use it for is your business.

[hydroep]

A clerk told me "those are the rules handed down by the Central Bank" when I asked why she was trying to find out my business.

In any case U.S. hard to get, unless yuh buying $ 100M ferries...

[No_Name]

A clerk told me "those are the rules handed down by the Central Bank" when I asked why she was trying to find out my business.

In any case U.S. hard to get, unless yuh buying $ 100M ferries...

USD not hard to get, it is very much available, whether it be in an acct or acquired from the bank...
After all, ent d 1-Puss dem biz open n stocked eday, ent drugz come into d country eday, Spanish doh take pymt fuh goods in Bs...!!!

[zoom rader]

A clerk told me "those are the rules handed down by the Central Bank" when I asked why she was trying to find out my business.

In any case U.S. hard to get, unless yuh buying $ 100M ferries...

Central bank full ah chit.

Just tell them your wife needs a pu55y operation abroad. That's all they need to know.

[RedVEVO]

A clerk told me "those are the rules handed down by the Central Bank" when I asked why she was trying to find out my business.

In any case U.S. hard to get, unless yuh buying $ 100M ferries...

USD not hard to get, it is very much available, whether it be in an acct or acquired from the bank...
After all, ent d 1-Puss dem biz open n stocked eday, ent drugz come into d country eday, Spanish doh take pymt fuh goods in Bs...!!!

Plenty USD ..

Everywhere ..

[innocent criminal]

Seriously. What d skunt dey need to know! Bank tellers is serious maco

[regcore]

Seriously. What d skunt dey need to know! Bank tellers is serious maco

yuh hadda remember that 99% of them bank tellers/supervisors working for small money so when they see other trinis with more than them is level heart burn (typical trini behavior) so they hadda fight you down and give you one set of trouble for your own thing to make them sleep better at night.....

[Chimera]

bank workers making a nice lil change reselling USD on the black market

so they just outright blank most people, only those who get on dotish does get through

look 2 true stories

a few months ago i went fcb chaguanas for USD , me and the wife were going abroad the next week
they outright blank me downstairs, they tell me how i get USD in the last 3 months and they cant give me any
i tell them i want the name of the person who make that decision to refuse me the $$, they say thats an internal decision and they cant give me the name. i tell them if someone refusing me USD then they must be able to put a name on the refusal.
after i start to get on loud ..they send me upstairs....and they agree to give me $1000 USD, saying how the account I try to take it from was recently opened and how people just opening FCB accounts to get USD and they not allowing that. I ask them so what about the accounts i have over `10 years....they eh say nun..they just send me back downstairs by the first teller who initially blank me to collect my $1000 US. i ask her if she doh feel like an idiot, she say is not her decision to make and she laugh.



last week i gone FCB san juan.....they give me $500 USD for my wife monday morning and tell me come back for $500 US for myself the next morning,how they put my name on the list for sure
when i gone tuesday.....a different teller blanking me, saying how i get 500 USD the day before and they dont have any usd at all to give me right now, to go get in the Airport(travelling the next day)
i start to get on like a BUGWAAANAAA...tell them close all the accounts that i have in FCB and bring cheques for everything, and i want USD cheques for USD accounts and Canadian cheques for canadian accounts.
after 2 minutes they have the $500 US to give me

the trick is you have to get on like a very loud BUGWAAANAAA/market vendor/fish vendor/rowley

[dogg]

bthe trick is you have to get on like a very loud BUGWAAANAAA/market vendor/fish vendor/rowley

I;ve never been able to do that.

anyways, I was able to get the cash at another branch, so all is well. Until I need to withdraw more than a few hundred I guess.

[hydroep]

Squeaky wheel does get the grease.

When yuh 'nice', playing 'civilized' or obeying the rules they does run roughshod over yuh.

It's a sad state of affairs when the only way to get relief is to protest, bun tyre etc. or as in the case of these institutions embarrass they skunt in-house and on social media...

[widdyphuck]

Wondering if anyone has any success with purchasing US dollars from the banks within recent times..
Made a request for some dollars 3 months ago and nothing till date.

[Rovin]

u eh tell dem ur tuner user name ...

[pugboy]

i thought you was a big roller the way u belittling brian and shelly dass

didn’t realize u is a bottom feeder

[widdyphuck]

i thought you was a big roller the way u belittling brian and shelly dass

didn’t realize u is a bottom feeder

How does applying for US in a bank equate to bottom feeder?

[VexXx Dogg]

I thought they were only releasing USD to john public only with proof of travel?

[zoom rader]

Red Government made the TT dollar too too paper

Four ship­ping com­pa­nies not ac­cept­ing TT dol­lars from next month

TTD like “mo­nop­oly mon­ey” says Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion head

Fear of hike in prices due to changes

From next month four ship­ping com­pa­nies in this coun­try will no longer be ac­cept­ing TT dol­lars from cus­tomers wish­ing to im­port items here, in­stead, they will on­ly be ac­cept­ing pay­ment of freight charges in Unit­ed States dol­lars.



This has led to con­cern from some busi­ness that it could mean high­er prices for con­sumers and if not more prob­lems for them to im­port the items they sell.

The four ship­ping agents are said to King Ocean Ser­vices, Trop­i­cal Ex­press Couri­ers, Crow­ley Trinidad Lim­it­ed and Seaboard Ma­rine (Trinidad) Ltd.

“Seaboard Ma­rine wish­es to ad­vise our val­ued cus­tomers that ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 17, 2021, we have adopt­ed a pol­i­cy re­quir­ing all freight charges paid in Trinidad to be done in US dol­lars,” a re­lease from Seaboard Ma­rine stat­ed.

“The con­tin­ued dif­fi­cul­ty of con­vert­ing Trinidad & To­ba­go dol­lars in­to U.S. dol­lars has made adop­tion of this pol­i­cy nec­es­sary and is ap­plic­a­ble on all charges list­ed on Car­ri­er’s bills of lad­ing. As al­ways, we thank you for your con­tin­ued sup­port,” it stat­ed.

Pres­i­dent of the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) Gar­ry Dal­la Cos­ta said while the en­tire fra­ter­ni­ty has not tak­en a sim­i­lar de­ci­sion he un­der­stands the “log­ic” be­hind the move tak­en by the four ship­ping agents.

SATT has over two dozen ship­ping agents as mem­bers.

“These ship­ping com­pa­nies have been col­lect­ing freight in T&T dol­lars, they have been ac­cept­ing TT dol­lars and there is one par­tic­u­lar com­pa­ny who has just about $50 mil­lion in TT sit­ting in the bank in Trinidad and there is no means of hav­ing it con­vert­ed. So, by and large, they don’t have any re­al ac­cess to the mon­ey,” Dal­la Cos­ta said.

“Then there’s a sec­ond prob­lem us­ing the mon­ey. The oil com­pa­nies in Trinidad if you’re buy­ing fu­el off tankers they are not ac­cept­ing TT dol­lars, they have to pay in US dol­lars so this is a sit­u­a­tion where the TT dol­lar ba­si­cal­ly to them is just mo­nop­oly mon­ey, you can­not use it,” he said.

Dal­la Cos­ta said un­less that sit­u­a­tion is changed and there is some means of hav­ing the TT dol­lars con­vert­ed “then re­al­ly the ship­ping lines do not have a choice at this time.”

“I plan on hav­ing a meet­ing with the as­so­ci­a­tion’s mem­bers on it and we will be ap­proach­ing the min­is­ter of fi­nance in the ear­ly new year to dis­cuss it,” Dal­la Cos­ta said.”

“You can­not op­er­ate an op­er­a­tion like this in an ad hoc man­ner you have to have prop­er­ly de­fined reg­u­la­tions in how we do busi­ness so I can see go­ing for­ward un­less this is done we are go­ing to have a prob­lem with freight pay­ments in Trinidad,” Dal­la Cos­ta warned.

Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Ra­jiv Diptee said the as­so­ci­a­tion as tak­en by sur­prise by the an­nounce­ment and said it will have “mas­sive ram­i­fi­ca­tions.”



“There will be an in­creased cost of do­ing busi­ness this will af­fect every­one across the sec­tor, not just the re­tail sec­tor, but many many or­gan­i­sa­tions that do im­ports be­cause if this is go­ing to add some­thing to the cost of do­ing busi­ness then that will have a neg­a­tive ef­fect,” Diptee said.

“We are in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers to re­al­ly get an idea of how the bot­tom line will be af­fect­ed. This is some­thing that took us quite by sur­prise at a time when we are do­ing our best to con­trol the cost of do­ing busi­ness which is some­thing we don’t re­al­ly have con­trol over but which is some­thing which we ac­tive­ly seek in the cus­tomers best in­ter­est,” Diptee said.

Diptee said this move can have a neg­a­tive im­pact go­ing for­ward.

“Any­thing on a pre-con­trac­tu­al ba­sis will be held at agreed prices but cer­tain­ly mov­ing for­ward this is go­ing to have an im­pact yet to be mea­sured on how this will af­fect the av­er­age cus­tomer and this is some­thing that we are talk­ing to a lot of par­ties about, a lot of groups, a lot of busi­ness en­ti­ties and try­ing to get a han­dle on how this will af­fect us be­cause this has mas­sive ram­i­fi­ca­tions mov­ing for­ward for the in­dus­try,” Diptee said.

Pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) Visham Bab­wah said this was an­oth­er pos­si­ble nail in the cof­fin to the in­dus­try.

“This is go­ing to have a se­ri­ous­ly neg­a­tive im­pact on our busi­ness­es be­cause of the fact that when we pur­chase stuff we have to pay in US but we usu­al­ly pay the freight in TT dol­lars here so now we will have to find ad­di­tion­al US, which is al­ready scarce, to pay the freight amount so it will mean that the al­lo­ca­tion that we are get­ting from the com­mer­cial banks to pur­chase goods will now have to go to­ward pay­ing freight al­so,” Bab­wah said.

Bab­wah said get­ting US dol­lars from com­mer­cial banks al­ready has its chal­lenges.

“Get­ting the al­lo­ca­tion is al­ways dif­fi­cult and the al­lo­ca­tion every so of­ten it is be­ing re­duced so we are get­ting a less­er amount from six months ago, and from three months ago, the amount keeps go­ing down,” Bab­wah said.

“We are go­ing to have to pur­chase less be­cause the al­lo­ca­tion is not go­ing up from the bank,” he said.

Bab­wah said PriceS­mart is one of this coun­try’’s largest im­porters and users of for­eign ex­change but that forex is “repa­tri­at­ed.”

“You are giv­ing them the US dol­lars they are repa­tri­at­ing it, they are bring­ing what­ev­er goods they are sell­ing in Trinidad and now we have to pay US dol­lars in freight and in goods. The com­pa­nies here the agents of these ship­ping lines should al­so let the ship­ping lines know that a cer­tain amount can be col­lect­ed in TT dol­lars I don’t know if they have that but they need to un­der­stand that it is a prob­lem with our Forex sit­u­a­tion and it will run the busi­ness­es in se­ri­ous prob­lems if we have to pay all of these amounts in US dol­lars,” Bab­wah said.

Bab­wah said he ex­pects the sit­u­a­tion will re­sult in high­er prices and not on­ly for cars but most im­port­ed items.



“It will af­fect prices too be­cause re­mem­ber then you have a high­er de­mand for the goods be­cause you will be im­port­ing less the high­er de­mand for the goods what­ev­er item it may be once de­mand be­comes high­er now of course peo­ple will raise prices,” Bab­wah said.

“From our point of view we have been get­ting the hot end of the stick from the gov­ern­ment, the re­al hot end of the stick in terms of re­stric­tions and now with the ship­ping lines putting this type of pres­sure on lo­cal busi­ness­es it seems very un­fair,” he said.

Bab­wah called for at least 50 per cent of the freight charges be­ing ac­cept­ed in TT in­stead of a full change.

Ear­li­er this month PriceS­mart an­nounced its forex dif­fi­cul­ties.

“Please note that as for­eign cur­ren­cy be­comes less avail­able, our reg­u­lar sourc­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing of im­port­ed goods may be af­fect­ed in our clubs,” PriceS­mart stat­ed.

“We want to ex­press our com­mit­ment on main­tain­ing our busi­ness mod­el of pro­vid­ing the high­est qual­i­ty mer­chan­dise and ser­vice at the low­est cost pos­si­ble as we work out so­lu­tions that can sus­tain or sub­sti­tute our im­port­ed mer­chan­dise of­fer­ing,” it stat­ed.

“’We un­der­stand the val­ue that our se­lec­tion of items de­liv­ers, and we are work­ing dili­gent­ly to re­store any changes to our mem­bers’ reg­u­lar shop­ping cart,” it stat­ed.