The Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) says the de­ci­sion to sus­pend the ex­change of TT dol­lar ban­knotes by the Bank of Ja­maica was tak­en to re­duce costs and to pre­vent the pos­si­bil­i­ty of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing.

Last Fri­day, the Bank of Ja­maica, that coun­try’s cen­tral bank, is­sued an in­ter­im no­tice ad­vis­ing the pub­lic that the ex­ist­ing arrange­ment for the BOJ to repa­tri­ate T&T ban­knotes was cur­rent­ly un­der re­view. Ja­maica’s cen­tral bank al­so ad­vised that as of last Mon­day, the ex­change of T&T dol­lars at BOJ’s bank­ing counter was sus­pend­ed un­til fur­ther ad­vised.

A team from the CBTT, led by Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire was in Kingston, Ja­maica last week Thurs­day and Fri­day, at­tend­ing the 61st meet­ing of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) Com­mit­tee of Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nors, which was host­ed by Bank of Ja­maica.

On Mon­day, the BOJ is­sued a state­ment clar­i­fy­ing its in­ter­im no­tice on Fri­day re­gard­ing the sus­pen­sion of the ex­change of T&T dol­lars at the Bank of Ja­maica.

“The bank now wish­es to clar­i­fy that this is due to the fact that the Cen­tral Bank of T&T, to which this cur­ren­cy is repa­tri­at­ed, has sus­pend­ed the arrange­ments for the repa­tri­a­tion of T&T dol­lars un­til fur­ther ad­vised,” said the Ja­maican cen­tral bank.

Late Wednes­day, CBTT is­sued a re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue.

In the re­sponse, the CBTT said its coun­ter­part in­sti­tu­tions in the Caribbean re­gion have a long stand­ing arrange­ment to re­deem each oth­er’s cur­ren­cy.

“This means, for ex­am­ple, that the CBTT will pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly send to the Bank of Ja­maica (BOJ, which is Ja­maica’s Cen­tral Bank) the Ja­maican dol­lars (J$) the CBTT may have col­lect­ed over time. In turn, the BOJ will cred­it the CBTT’s ac­count with the equiv­a­lent in US$. This arrange­ment is rec­i­p­ro­cal and has worked well.

“The amounts col­lect­ed are gen­er­al­ly small, re­lat­ed to amounts that Gov­ern­ments may have col­lect­ed from in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies in court cas­es, em­bassies, some tax­es etc.

“For the most part, the cen­tral banks may make very lim­it­ed over-the-counter ex­changes from the pub­lic,” said the Cen­tral Bank of T&T.

The in­sti­tu­tion said these and oth­er cur­ren­cy arrange­ments were con­stant­ly be­ing re­viewed and dis­cussed among the staffs of the bank­ing de­part­ments of the var­i­ous cen­tral banks.

“This is, among oth­er things, to keep up with new tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ments, stream­line op­er­a­tions in­clud­ing to­wards re­duc­ing the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with repa­tri­at­ing ban­knotes, and staving off po­ten­tial av­enues for mon­ey laun­der­ing and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties,” said the Cen­tral Bank.

“In this par­tic­u­lar case the BOJ and CBTT staff con­sid­ered that it would be ap­pro­pri­ate to have the BOJ sus­pend its over-the-counter pub­lic ex­changes of TT$. This is in line with the cur­rent CBTT prac­tice of not en­gag­ing in such ex­changes with the pub­lic, ei­ther for J$ or any oth­er cur­ren­cy,” T&T’s cen­tral bank said.

Late Wednes­day, Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion quot­ed a state­ment post­ed on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert that day that the amount trad­ed in T&T dol­lars in Ja­maica “equals on­ly US$4,000 per month.”

In his state­ment, Im­bert took is­sue with an ar­ti­cle in a lo­cal news­pa­per, not the Guardian, “de­scrib­ing that small sum as ev­i­dence of a cur­ren­cy cri­sis.”

“How ir­re­spon­si­ble,” the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said, adding in a lat­er X mes­sage “all this dra­ma over such a small amount of forex (for­eign ex­change), mak­ing a moun­tain out of a mole­hill, cre­at­ing anx­i­ety for no rea­son.”