The financial stability of Suriname and the exchange rates are under heavy pressure. Fortu-nately government officials have found the cause of these problems. It turns out that the Foreign Currency Committee has failed big time. Shocking revelations indicate that the ...
Foreign Currency Committee that is tasked with monitoring all gold exports and the flow of foreign currency not only failed to do its job and to protects the nation’s best interest but that it has also put its integrity up for grabs.
Finance and Planning Minister Stanley Raghoebarsing on Thursday revealed that a private plane was intercepted at the airport several weeks ago and that a suspicious shipment of gold was onboard.
Officials were also shocked to find out that the suspect was in possession of an official permit for gold export. They were alarmed to learn that the state would not earn any money from this gold transport.
The Finance minister explained that the Foreign Currency Committee responded carelessly when asked for clarity regarding the special permit that it had issued. While the price of gold is at a historic high, Suriname could in fact earn big time but nothing could be farther from the truth as no extra money flows to the treasury. Gold exports reached an extreme low with regards to official reports despite the fact that activities increased in the gold mining fields. Minister Raghoebarsing claimed that the state lost at least $300 million over the course of the past couple of months. “300 million dollars that are left outside the nation and that will never come back,” said the Finance minister. Reports indicate that countless of gold export permits were mysteriously issued by the Foreign Currency Committee in the past couple of months. These permits were issued without any transparency or valid reasons. Some permit holders do not even export gold but their papers repeatedly receive an extension. “Why do people have permits if they do not even export? And why are these permits always granted extensions?”. The interception of the private plane is just the tip of the iceberg. Officials fear that there is already a system in place to take valuable natural resources out of the country via legal documentation without contributing any money to the treasury. This loss directly pushes the prices of foreign currency up while weakening the Surinamese dollar and the nation’s economy. Minister
Raghoebarsing assured that strict measures would be taken to tackle this practice.
