KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

The Gov­ern­ment has ex­tend­ed the pe­ri­od dur­ing which the for­mer Coat of Arms of Trinidad and To­ba­go may be used, push­ing the dead­line to Jan­u­ary 2, 2031.

The or­der ex­tend­ing the use of the for­mer em­blem was dat­ed De­cem­ber 18, 2025, and signed by Roger Alexan­der, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

The ex­ten­sion is con­tained in Le­gal No­tice No. 468, pub­lished on De­cem­ber 22, 2025, and made un­der sec­tion 5(2) of the Na­tion­al Em­blems of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Reg­u­la­tion) (Amend­ment) Act, 2025. The or­der al­lows the Min­is­ter to pre­scribe a lat­er date for the con­tin­ued use of the for­mer em­blem.

When the amend­ment was pro­claimed in Jan­u­ary 2025, it pro­vid­ed that the for­mer Coat of Arms could on­ly be used un­til Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, af­ter which the new de­sign was to take full ef­fect.

The de­ci­sion to change the na­tion­al sym­bol was first an­nounced by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Au­gust 18, 2024, dur­ing a spe­cial PNM con­ven­tion at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts.

The re­design re­placed the three ships as­so­ci­at­ed with Christo­pher Colum­bus with a gold steel­pan and pan sticks, re­flect­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

The Na­tion­al Em­blems of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Reg­u­la­tion) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025 was unan­i­mous­ly passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Jan­u­ary 13, 2025, clear­ing the way for the in­tro­duc­tion of the new Coat of Arms.

In June this year, the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go sus­pend­ed the roll­out of its 2025 se­ries $100 poly­mer ban­knote af­ter the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance di­rect­ed that pro­duc­tion of notes bear­ing the re­vised Coat of Arms be halt­ed.

In a state­ment at the time, the 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 had pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced that the up­dat­ed $100 note would en­ter cir­cu­la­tion by Sep­tem­ber 2025 and would in­clude en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and a new Coat of Arms fea­tur­ing the steel­pan. It said the changes were be­ing in­tro­duced at no ad­di­tion­al cost.

The Cen­tral Bank has not in­di­cat­ed whether a new roll­out time­line would be set or whether the de­sign would have been re­vised again, say­ing on­ly that it would con­tin­ue to keep the pub­lic in­formed.

Some gov­ern­ment ma­te­ri­als like sta­tionery al­ready have adopt­ed the re­vised Coat of Arms, while the for­mer em­blem con­tin­ues to ap­pear in oth­er of­fi­cial set­tings, in­clud­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter