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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Govt gives no reason for stopping new $100 note

by

GEISHA KOWLESSAR ALONZO
27 days ago
20250617

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

No rea­son was giv­en when the Gov­ern­ment man­dat­ed the Cen­tral Bank to sus­pend the print­ing of the new $100 poly­mer ban­knote fea­tur­ing the coun­try’s up­dat­ed Coat of Arms.

This was re­sponse by the Cen­tral Bank when asked to dis­close the rea­son be­hind the de­ci­sion.

“The re­quest did not spec­i­fy a rea­son,” the bank said.

The Cen­tral Bank al­so de­scribed the re­la­tion­ship be­tween it­self and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo as “calm and pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­est of T&T” when asked whether this re­la­tion­ship was strained or cor­dial.

Tan­coo in­struct­ed the bank to halt all ac­tiv­i­ty re­lat­ed to the 2025 se­ries note which was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for re­lease lat­er this year.

In the up­dat­ed de­sign, the three ships as­so­ci­at­ed with Christo­pher Colum­bus have been re­placed with the steel­pan.

In a no­tice on Sat­ur­day, the Cen­tral Bank said it had in­struct­ed its con­tract­ed print­er to stop all work re­lat­ed to the print­ing, de­sign and prepa­ra­tion of the new notes “un­til fur­ther no­tice.”

The bank was al­so asked if any meet­ings were sched­uled be­tween the Cen­tral Bank and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to dis­cuss the sus­pen­sion of the print­ing of the new notes.

“The Cen­tral Bank and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance share in­for­ma­tion dai­ly and cor­re­spond/meet at times, as need­ed, to get busi­ness done. As the new min­is­ter set­tles in, we may al­so work out a reg­u­lar meet­ing sched­ule to com­ple­ment the open in­ter­ac­tion al­ready in place,” the bank said.

The Cen­tral Bank was al­so asked what was the cost to print the new notes.

How­ev­er, it said, “While we are un­able to dis­close the con­tract cost pub­licly, de­tails on the sta­tus of print­ing, the cost in­curred to date, and the full con­tract be­tween the Cen­tral Bank and our ban­knote print­er were pro­vid­ed to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to re­gion­al econ­o­mist Dr Justin Ram to get his per­spec­tive on the sus­pen­sion.

“I’m not sure what that is. I guess all we can say is that we are wait­ing to get some fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Fi­nance Min­is­ter as to why they de­cid­ed to stop that but I can­not spec­u­late re­al­ly about why that in­struc­tion was giv­en to the bank.

“I think the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance just has to pro­vide clar­i­fi­ca­tion and the ex­pla­na­tion to the pub­lic and I’m sure he will do that iin due course,” he said.


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