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In the last few days, the pub­lic de­bate on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change has ben­e­fit­ted sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the pub­li­ca­tion of two well-ar­gued, con­se­quen­tial con­tri­bu­tions on the is­sue of whether the Cen­tral Bank should dis­close this coun­try’s top users of for­eign ex­change, as a pre­vi­ous Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Jwala Ram­bar­ran, did in De­cem­ber 2015...and for which he was fired.

The first con­tri­bu­tion is Cen­tral Bank Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, Du­ties and the Pub­lic In­ter­est, by UWI St Au­gus­tine Prin­ci­pal Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, who is the pre-em­i­nent le­gal schol­ar in the re­gion, as well as be­ing the au­thor of Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty in Off­shore Fi­nan­cial Law, Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2013.

The sec­ond es­say is The Cen­tral Bank’s Du­ty to Dis­close by Dr Ter­rence Far­rell, who holds a PhD in eco­nom­ics, and a law de­gree, and is a for­mer deputy Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T. He served for 15 years as a di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd and its suc­ces­sor com­pa­ny, Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd, which is the re­gion’s largest fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion. I be­lieve he is T&T's fore­most com­men­ta­tor on eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial mat­ters.