GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon says the Cen­tral Bank’s de­ci­sion to up­date the $100 ban­knote re­flects a com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the cur­ren­cy.

His com­ments came in wake of the bank an­nounc­ing over the week­end that the new­ly de­signed $100 bill, which will be in cir­cu­la­tion from Sep­tem­ber, will fea­ture the steel­pan in­stead of the three ships of Christo­pher Colum­bus.

Ar­joon said the in­tegri­ty of the cur­ren­cy is vi­tal for eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.

“When con­sumers trust that their mon­ey is gen­uine and chal­leng­ing to coun­ter­feit, they are more like­ly to en­gage in every­day trans­ac­tions, there­by sup­port­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. This con­fi­dence is es­sen­tial for an econ­o­my to thrive, where both con­sumers and busi­ness­es feel se­cure in their fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions,” he ex­plained.

He fur­ther not­ed that in­tro­duc­ing new ban­knotes with ad­vanced se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures is a stan­dard prac­tice among cen­tral banks, par­tic­u­lar­ly to com­bat coun­ter­feit­ing.

“As tech­nol­o­gy evolves, coun­ter­feit­ers gain ac­cess to in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed print­ing tech­niques. By in­cor­po­rat­ing en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty el­e­ments—such as larg­er se­cu­ri­ty strips and holo­graph­ic fea­tures—the dif­fi­cul­ty of repli­cat­ing ban­knotes is sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased. These mea­sures are cru­cial for pre­vent­ing fi­nan­cial loss­es due to coun­ter­feit­ing and en­sur­ing that the cur­ren­cy main­tains its val­ue,” Ar­joon ex­plained.

Mov­ing for­ward, he added it is vi­tal for the Cen­tral Bank to im­ple­ment a cam­paign that high­lights the se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures of the new notes, adding this will en­sure con­sumers and busi­ness­es are aware of these fea­tures and are bet­ter equipped to pro­tect them­selves against coun­ter­feit­ing.

On Jan­u­ary 13, 2025, Par­lia­ment ap­proved the Na­tion­al Em­blems of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Reg­u­la­tion) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025, to give le­gal ef­fect for the change of the Coat of Arms.

The ad­just­ed Coat of Arms has been in­te­grat­ed in­to the $100 ban­knote (2025 se­ries).

As out­lined in the bank’s Sep­tem­ber 2024 Strate­gic Plan Up­date, the pro­duc­tion of the 2025 se­ries was mod­i­fied to in­te­grate the change.

The Cen­tral Bank said this note will be very sim­i­lar to the cur­rent $100 note (2019 se­ries) with a few new se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures, not­ing that the 2025 se­ries is now sched­uled for pub­lic dis­tri­b­u­tion by Sep­tem­ber.

Oth­er changes com­pared to the 2019 se­ries in­volve a larg­er se­cu­ri­ty strip in­cor­po­rat­ing re­cent ban­knote tech­nol­o­gy with, among oth­er things, the Bird of Par­adise in iri­des­cent ink in a larg­er see-through ‘win­dow’ with holo­graph­ic el­e­ments, the bank said.

The new $100 poly­mer bill was sup­posed to be in­tro­duced in De­cem­ber last year. How­ev­er, this was post­poned to this year be­cause of the an­nounce­ment of the Coat of Arms re­design.

The cur­rent $100 bill was is­sued in De­cem­ber 2019 and was the first in the suite of poly­mer ban­knotes.