Renu­ka Singh

A new poly­mer $100 bill will be in cir­cu­la­tion with­in the next two weeks. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day an­nounced a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion to re­move the ex­ist­ing $100 bill and re­place it with a new hard­er to coun­ter­feit note.

Gov­ern­ment wants this change to hap­pen be­fore the end of the year and in an ef­fort to achieve this Young said there would be sit­tings of the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment to­day and the Up­per House to­mor­row, with a view to amend­ing the Cen­tral Bank Act to re­duce the time giv­en to re­move a note from cir­cu­la­tion from three months to a min­i­mum of 14 days.

At the post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing yes­ter­day Young said the re­moval of the cur­rent $100 note will un­der­mine the fi­nanc­ing of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty through stored mon­ey.

“To­day, I ad­vised the Cab­i­net that in or­der for us to fight mon­ey laun­der­ing, in­clud­ing the fi­nanc­ing of drugs and nar­cotics and il­le­gal firearms, tax eva­sion and the black mon­ey econ­o­my, coun­ter­feit­ing and oth­er re­lat­ed prob­lems, that the Gov­ern­ment should with­draw from cir­cu­la­tion the cur­rent TT$100 note is­sued by the Cen­tral Bank,” he said.

Young ex­plained: “These crim­i­nal and cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties are fi­nanced by il­lic­it mon­ey and in many in­stances are sup­port­ed and con­duct­ed through the use of stored cash, which in­ter alia, is dif­fi­cult to trace.

“At Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, we have been mon­i­tor­ing a num­ber of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and we be­lieve that the stor­ing of cash is be­ing used to un­der­mine good gov­er­nance and the rule of law.

“This is all about na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. For quite a while now at Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, we have been pro­vid­ed with cer­tain in­for­ma­tion for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time with re­spect to crim­i­nal and cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties, which in the view of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, serves to un­der­mine the rule of law, good gov­er­nance, and our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” Young said.

As a re­sult, he said, “I’ve ad­vised Cab­i­net and it has been ac­cept­ed that we should re­place the ex­ist­ing $100 note with a new­ly is­sued note and a new de­sign print­ed on poly­mer pa­per.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter coun­ter­feit finds showed that peo­ple took small­er notes, some­times a $1 bill, bleached them and reprint­ed them as blue $100 bills.

“So we’re chang­ing out the ex­ist­ing $100,” he said.

The new bill, which was re­vealed by the Cen­tral Bank yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, will be in cir­cu­la­tion with­in 14 days.

“The poly­mer pa­per im­me­di­ate­ly adds a mea­sure of se­cu­ri­ty,” Young said.

The new de­sign is ex­pect­ed to have a fa­cil­i­ty to as­sist the vi­su­al­ly im­paired.

“Cer­tain ad­vice has been sought and Cab­i­net has ac­cept­ed that we need to amend the Cen­tral Bank Act so to­mor­row (to­day), we will be go­ing to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to amend the Cen­tral Bank Act,” he said.

Young said the ad­min­is­tra­tive over­sight of the re­moval and in­tro­duc­tion of the new bill will be han­dled by the Cen­tral Bank.

He added: “I have al­so asked and it has been ac­cept­ed that there be an emer­gency sit­ting of Sen­ate on Sat­ur­day, a spe­cial sit­ting be­cause of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty na­ture.”

The min­is­ter said he ex­pect­ed to have the amend­ment to the Cen­tral Bank Act passed by Sat­ur­day.

Young said the cur­ren­cy will be print­ed by a com­pa­ny in Unit­ed King­dom and he ex­pect­ed min­i­mal in­ter­rup­tion dur­ing the roll­out of the new bill. Young could not pro­vide the cost of the new bill.

“You are be­ing asked to ex­change your ex­ist­ing TT$100 notes for new notes. Once you go in­to the sys­tem, as will be an­nounced by the Cen­tral Bank, you pro­vide what cash you have in hand, they will be ex­changed for new poly­mer $100 notes and we just con­tin­ue busi­ness go­ing for­ward,” he said.

“I can guar­an­tee you this, it is go­ing to help with the fight against cor­rup­tion and the crim­i­nal el­e­ment who must now present their mon­ey and say where it came from.”