There is no doubt that Wen­dell Mot­t­ley and Dr Eu­ric Bobb are among the most dis­tin­guished econ­o­mists that this coun­try has pro­duced.

For their con­tri­bu­tions to the man­age­ment of the T&T econ­o­my, these men have re­ceived the recog­ni­tion of their coun­try: Mr Mot­t­ley, who served as the min­is­ter of fi­nance be­tween 1991 and 1995, re­ceived this na­tion's high­est award, the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2018; Dr Bobb was award­ed T&T's sec­ond high­est award, the Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold), in 1994, for his ser­vice as the gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank from 1984 to 1988.

It is al­so a fact that the na­tion­al awards re­ceived by the econ­o­mists were made on the rec­om­men­da­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in the case of Mr Mot­t­ley, and Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in Dr Bobb's case.

Giv­en the qual­i­ty, length and breadth of their pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ences, lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, both men bring a mea­sure of grav­i­tas to their state­ments. It is al­so un­usu­al, if not un­prece­dent­ed, in the T&T con­text, that these two men, would sub­mit a joint­ly au­thored com­men­tary on an is­sue as im­por­tant, top­i­cal and all-en­com­pass­ing as 'Man­ag­ing For­eign Ex­change in Trinidad and To­ba­go.'

In their 1,409-word com­men­tary, which is pub­lished in full in to­day's Busi­ness Guardian, Mr Mot­t­ley and Dr Bobb make the point that mech­a­nisms are need­ed to al­lo­cate the sup­ply of for­eign ex­change among com­pet­ing de­mands.

"In April 1993 the bu­reau­crat­ic sys­tem that was in force since 1942 was re­placed by a mar­ket-based sys­tem," they out­line, clear­ly re­fer­ring to the flota­tion of the TT dol­lar that took place 31 years ago.

One of the ma­jor el­e­ments of the re­form was that "the ex­change rate would be de­ter­mined un­der a man­aged float in­flu­enced by over­all eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances," in­clud­ing how much forex the coun­try gen­er­at­ed and how much forex the pop­u­la­tion of this coun­try used.

Mr Mot­t­ley served as the min­is­ter of fi­nance when the TT dol­lar was float­ed. "The mar­ket-based sys­tem in­tro­duced in 1993 worked rea­son­ably well for over two decades, a pe­ri­od dur­ing which a re­mark­able in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy saw T&T be­come a gas-based econ­o­my with a world-class pres­ence in the mar­kets for LNG, am­mo­nia, methanol, UAN and melamine," the em­i­nent econ­o­mists opined.

They al­so not­ed that there is no mirac­u­lous so­lu­tion to the re­cur­ring short­age of forex, but that "ex­pe­ri­ence teach­es us that an ad­min­is­tra­tive sys­tem is bur­den­some, in­ef­fi­cient and less ef­fec­tive than the mar­ket-based sys­tem in place over most of the last few decades."

Their view dif­fers from that held by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, who ar­gued in a news re­lease is­sued on Sun­day, that a fixed ex­change rate is bet­ter for T&T in that the gov­ern­ment is bet­ter able to con­trol in­fla­tion.

The de­bate over whether a float­ing or fixed rate of ex­change is bet­ter for T&T comes at a time when Mr Im­bert sig­nalled in June that the coun­try faces a chal­leng­ing rev­enue sit­u­a­tion over the next two years, giv­en his pro­jec­tions of en­er­gy prices and pro­duc­tion.

What the ex­change rate de­bate lacks is a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of the April 1993 flota­tion, what were the cir­cum­stances that made the change to a mar­ket-based sys­tem work "rea­son­ably well" and whether a re­turn to a float­ing ex­change rate would be best for T&T.

Giv­en the cur­rent forex dif­fi­cul­ties, this analy­sis should be con­duct­ed ex­pe­di­tious­ly and by a re­spect­ed in­de­pen­dent body.