The Open Market Operations (OMO) are part of the IMF program to skim money from society. The hope is that the price will stabilize due to a tightening of the money supply. Since the Central Bank of Suriname (CBvS) started this program, the situation has worsened.
1. The SRD price has not stabilized since the start of the OMO. The SRD rate has gone from 21 to 25+. No one has been able to explain this. Remarkable. The SRD nationalists have become about 20 percent poorer and above all remain nationalistic!
2. OMO rates have remained high and continue to rise. 80 percent+ plus for three-month term deposits. This too remains stubbornly high. No one can deny the above facts. It’s simple; Just deterioration, zero, nil, improvement!
The monetary measures are failing grandly. The government and the CBvS are not on the same page, so it is a mess. No one is in control anymore. The CBvS blames the extravagant policy of the government and unfortunately the government has to compensate for inflation with all kinds of patchwork, otherwise the people won’t eat tomorrow. It is suspected that it is a conscious strategy to let the price rise slowly to 50. But people don’t talk about it. And if it is a conscious choice to let the price rise to 50, then I suggest that we make no effort but release the price immediately, no OMO for the time being. Don’t fool the people. When the price is at 50, start with the OMO again.
In conclusions, the OMO has failed! It remains a failure and will not achieve its intended goal without proper evaluation and additional measures. The next finance minister will not do anything like this and would probably go down in history worse than the last. – There is no proper coordination between the government and the CBvS. The government is increasing the money supply and the OMO/CBvS is trying to skim off that money by giving the banks free money. We’re breezy pur trout! Yes, there really is such a thing as free money! Everyone has to work for their money, including the president of Suriname, but the Surinamese bank directors don’t have to do that because they get 80 percent interest to sell SRD toilet paper to the CBvS. And he pays 80 percent for SRD toilet paper, pure profit for the bank and nice bonuses for the bank directors. Who wouldn’t want that? Where is the bank tax to rake in that 80 percent interest through the front door as a government so that babies no longer have to die and healthcare staff can be paid decently?
There must be an immediate evaluation NOW of the failure of the OMO and hard consequences must be attached to the evaluation results. Without strongly regulating the parallel market, legalizing the sale of currency by cambios only to banks, one will mop with the tap open. The price will continue to rise and everyone stands and watches as the bank managers and cambio owners laugh. Let it be clear, that you can’t keep doing the same thing if it doesn’t work. If you do it anyway and get the same unwanted result again, can you be equated with a madman or an ass in superlative degrees? Future Finance Minister, do you want to be a madman or an ass from day one? Are we witnessing the greatest public corruption, ignorance, greatest enrichment of the banks, or the greatest legal robbery of the Surinamese population?
Dr Ashwin Ramcharan RO.
