Regional central bank officials meet

SPEEDY PAYMENTS, management of debt and management of foreign reserves are among the main topics being discussed by several Central Bank operations managers from around the region at the Grande Salle of the Central Bank today.
The two-day conference, headed by Central Bank Governor Dr Delisle Worrell, features Barbados Jamaica, Guyana, Belize and Trinidad and Tobago.
Worrell, in opening the two-day conference today, said while modern communications technology made it possible to effect payments almost instantly from anywhere in the world, regional territories could only make relatively small cash transactions and transfers in real time because of security and verification issues.
The Central Bank governor, prior to opening the conference, warmly welcomed personnel from the Nation newspaper to the event. This was the first such occasion since the bank announced two weeks ago it would no longer invite journalists from the company to cover its events because of what it described as a “lack of professional integrity”. It related to a headline published on May 8 over a story about pending layoffs at the Central Bank. (RRM/RJ)