For the small open economy of Botswana the PPP theory is validated in both the absolute and relative version for the Pula-Dollar exchange rate during the sample period 1992 third quarter to 2002 fourth quarter. The Pula-Dollar exchange rate is determined by the long-term trends in Botswana's Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the USA's CPI. The influence of the USA CPI is considerable. In the long-run there is no trade off between export competitiveness through devaluation and inflation. But as the speed of adjustment in the short-term towards long-term is slow, there is some flexibility for the exchange rate policy. The monetary policy can be used in the short-run to counter the inflation. There is no real appreciation of the Pula in the long run. This contradicts the portfolio balance theory which advocates that for a trade account surplus economy like Botswana the real exchange rate will appreciate through the limited demand for foreign assets. The lesson for the exchange rate policy for Botswana may be that it is better to keep more flexible the Pula-Dollar exchange rate than keeping it totally fixed.

Wickremasinghe (2008) and Çiçek (2014) in which weak form was found to exist whilst the semi-strong form was found not to exist. This paper has filled an important gap as it is the first study to investigate the efficiency of the foreign exchange market in Botswana.

The purpose of this paper is to compute and to compare real exchange rate (RER) indexes for Botswana based on different measures in order to assess BotswanaÕs competitiveness relative to its major trading partners. This is the second research to calculate and analyse various measures of competitiveness for Botswana through the RER, and it is more comprehensive than the first. Two measures of competitiveness, being the bilateral RERs and multilateral RERs based on the Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) deflator show that Botswana has been gaining competitiveness relative to its major trading partners over the study period, while the one based on EXPVs indicated a loss of competitiveness. These findings coincides with the argument of Fleissing and Grennes (1994) that for a given base year, some contradictions concerning the direction of currency misalignment can be due to the behaviour of alternative price indexes used in the construction of the RER indexes.

This paper undertakes an investigation of the impact of the Rand/Pula exchange rate volatility on Botswana’s economic growth. The paper is using annual time series data, from 1977 to 2018. The Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) is employed to evaluate the impact of the real exchange rate volatility on Botswana’s economic growth. The GARCH model results found the Pula/Rand exchange rate to be volatile. The Rand/Pula exchange rate volatility does not have an impact on Botswana’s economic growth. This finding mirrors those of Kaur et al. (2019) and Musyoki et al. (2012). They found negative but insignificant impact of exchange rate volatility on economic growth in Malaysia and Kenya, respectively. Our empirical findings suggest that Botswana’s economic growth is largely explained by trade openness and growth of labour force and not influenced by the Rand/Pula exchange rate volatility.

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