Making sense of the weak FX market: Caribbean nationals and FDIs

Part 5

Last week the Bank of Guyana announced via one of the local daily newspapers that the foreign exchange market situation is stabilizing. I do not doubt this announcement from the central bank given the statistics we have analyzed in the past four essays on the exchange rate. There should not be serious exchange rate problems given the fact that the current account has improved and domestic consumption has declined significantly since 2011-12. A large percentage of consumption goes towards imported goods. Therefore, the dramatic decline in household consumption, which we observed in the previous essay, should put less pressure on the demand for foreign exchange. But this has not been the case as various newspapers reported over the past few weeks. Several importers were unable to obtain hard currencies in a timely manner. As a result,