Shas­tri Boodan

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers said busi­ness­es will be the biggest losers if there is no ex­ten­sion of time to de­posit the old $100 bill.

At a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the of­fices of the Cou­va-Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce, Vivek Char­ran, Pres­i­dent of the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, said busi­ness­men need at least three days to de­posit cash in­to the bank from Christ­mas sales.

“We can­not be asked to ac­cept old ten­der on the 31st ( De­cem­ber 31, 2019) and then al­so de­posit on the 31st,” he said.

“The banks have been clear. It has caused a cer­tain amount of pan­ic among our mem­bers where peo­ple have been call­ing from all over want­i­ng clar­i­ty on the sit­u­a­tion.”

If there is no ex­ten­sion, Char­ran said, busi­ness­es will have no choice but to stop ac­cept­ing the old $100 from De­cem­ber 27 to have enough time to de­posit them with­out the fear of los­ing mon­ey.

He said cus­tomers are hold­ing on the new bills and spend­ing the old ban­knotes.

“When those salaries and bonus­es get paid out on Fri­day and over the week­end and on to Christ­mas Eve it will be putting old ten­der back in­to the sys­tem,” he said.

Char­ran said grant­i­ng the ex­ten­sion of time to busi­ness­men will al­low cus­tomers to spend their mon­ey with some lev­el of com­fort.

“We want to be there for the peo­ple, we don’t want to dis­rupt com­merce,” he said.

Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce Ram­c­hand Ra­jbal Maraj said it would be risky to car­ry mon­ey to the Cen­tral Bank af­ter De­cem­ber 31.

Ram­per­sad Sieu­raj, head of the Pe­nal Debe Cham­ber, said de­mon­e­ti­za­tion is a good move.

“I would hope that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and what­ev­er bod­ies they have . . . will be able to take the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion as those new cus­tomers be it fish­er­men, peo­ple who sell­ing bha­ji and bo­di, what­ev­er they sell­ing.

“At the end of the day the in­for­ma­tion could be sent to the Board of In­land Rev­enue and then, if they have nev­er been pay­ing tax­es be­fore, we au­to­mat­i­cal­ly find our­selves in a favourable tax col­lec­tion of 25 per cent,” Sieu­raj said.