ewart s williams : challenges facing the caribbean centre for monetary studies opening remarks by mr ewart s williams, governor of the central bank of trinidad and tobago, at the thirty - sixth annual monetary studies conference, jointly hosted by the central bank of trinidad and tobago and the caribbean centre for monetary studies, st augustine, 1 - 4 november 2004. * * * on behalf of the management and staff of the central bank of trinidad and tobago, i wish to extend a warm welcome to all the participants ( especially our guests from the caribbean and further afield ), to the thirty - sixth annual monetary studies conference. the central bank is especially pleased to be collaborating with the caribbean centre for monetary studies to jointly host this conference, in this our 40th anniversary year. i should note that this conference has existed for almost as long as the central bank and has become an important fixture in the conference agenda in the caribbean. it, in fact started as, the regional programme of monetary studies, in 1968, under the leadership of sir alister mcintyre, ( who was then, director of the institute of social and economic research on the st. augustine campus of the university of the west indies ). as dr. jackson indicated, the first conference was really intended to focus on the implications of the new sterling agreements following the devaluation of the pound sterling to which most of our currencies were pegged. the agenda also included a few other topics : ( i ) financial accounting in the caribbean ; ( ii ) the operation of insurance companies ; ( iii ) the development of the eastern caribbean currency area ; and ( iv ) the design of an ideal accounting framework for the plantation economy. it ’ s interesting, but many of these continue to be burning issues today. for many years this conference continued to be staged, in a process of close collaboration between the regional central banks, university of the west indies and the university of guyana, but essentially administered by the university. and here we need to pay tribute to those “ essentially unpaid co - ordinators ” who did yeoman work in keeping the programme alive : professor compton bourne, maurice odle, adlith browne and ramesh ramsaran. in may 1995, uwi and the regional central banks signed a formal agreement to establish the caribbean centre for monetary studies ( the ccms ). the core mission of the centre is to provide caricom central banks with timely economic intelligence as well as monetary and financial policy advice by : ( i ) conducting relevant research

the misplaced perception that there was no urgency. bis central bankers ’ speeches the sharp slowdown in the economy towards the end of the decade and the clico crisis collapse laid bare the serious gaps in our legislative infrastructure and in our regulatory processes. we took a major step towards upgrading our financial sector legislation with the passage of a new financial institutions act ( fia ) in december 2008. while this relates specifically to the banking system, it is basically framework legislation that establishes the principles for the other pieces of financial sector legislation. work to upgrade financial legislation has picked up pace in recent months and it is now expected that the insurance bill would be presented to parliament before the end of this year ; and new credit union legislation by early next year ; and a separate law for contributory pension schemes, later in the year. a new securities and investments act is also in the offing and i am sure that chairman of the securities and exchange commission ( sec ) will have more to say about this …. i want to make the point that while we are making reasonable progress in upgrading our legislation and while, in recent years, the bank has made important strides in improving regulation, like other developing countries there are some critical challenges that we need to overcome to significantly improve the effectiveness of our financial regulation. the challenges have to do with encouraging a culture of good corporate governance : getting institutions to buy into higher standards of transparency and disclosure : establishing steps to promote market discipline : taking measures to promote market discipline : and establishing new mechanisms for regulatory co - operation. corporate governance a recent oecd report noted that poor corporate governance is invariably at the root of most failures in risk management. in my view, that was the crux of the problem with clico and is a potential problem with many financial institutions in trinidad and tobago. boards of directors need to insist that they be given information on the risks their institutions face and on the measures being put in place to mitigate these risks. however, to serve as an effective layer of checks and balances, board members need to have the requisite industry skills and expertise. in the small caribbean space this is a real concern, given the limited availability of qualified professionals willing or able to sit on corporate boards. good governance is a mindset and pivots on boards setting the right tone and working to ensure that this tone is translated throughout the entire organisation. boards need to operate in a manner in which there is healthy tension between themselves and management. while the board ’ s job is not