Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s rich his­to­ry is speck­led by the oc­cu­pa­tion of the colo­nial pow­ers, name­ly the French, Span­ish and British in­flu­ences. Up­on their ar­rival to the shores of these lit­tle is­lands, no one form of cur­ren­cy was present; it was as di­verse as the peo­ple in­hab­it­ing the coun­try at present.

On Au­gust 31, 1962, Trinidad and To­ba­go ob­tained its in­de­pen­dence and be­gan putting things in­to place to es­tab­lish their own in­sti­tu­tions. One such in­sti­tu­tion was the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go, whose first pri­or­i­ty was to im­ple­ment a form of na­tion­al cur­ren­cy.

Orig­i­nal­ly, the British Caribbean Cur­ren­cy Board was re­spon­si­ble for cur­ren­cy with­in the British colonies of the East­ern Caribbean. Al­most two years af­ter its ap­point­ment, the Cen­tral Bank took over and is­sued its first notes on De­cem­ber 14, 1964.

The first de­nom­i­na­tion of notes to her­ald this era of his­to­ry in T&T were $1, $5, $10 and $20. Like their pre­de­ces­sor, these notes kept the gen­er­al, unique colour but were mod­i­fied in size and per­son­alised to re­flect el­e­ments of the coun­try. This in­clud­ed a fea­ture of Queen Eliz­a­beth II and the coun­try’s Coat of Arms on the face, the Trea­sury which was the Cen­tral Bank’s ini­tial lo­ca­tion on the rear, as well as de­pic­tions of in­dus­tries im­por­tant to T&T’s econ­o­my.

As with all things, change is im­mi­nent to fa­cil­i­tate growth and de­vel­op­ment. As time and his­to­ry pro­gressed, there have been five ma­jor changes to the cur­ren­cy since its first is­suance.

Up­on gain­ing the sta­tus of a Re­pub­lic na­tion in 1976, some amend­ments were nec­es­sary. In 1977, Queen Eliz­a­beth’s por­trait was re­moved from the cen­tre of the bills and now tak­ing cen­tre stage, was the coun­try’s Coat of Arms, and two new de­nom­i­na­tions of notes, a brown $50 and a blue $100 were in­tro­duced.

This $50 bill how­ev­er, had a short lifes­pan. In 1979, two years af­ter its is­suance, the notes were pulled from cir­cu­la­tion when a ship­ment of them were stolen, re­sult­ing in the de­mon­e­ti­za­tion of the bank notes.

As time passed and the in­sti­tu­tion it­self ex­pand­ed and be­came per­ma­nent, the Cen­tral Bank’s head­quar­ters was moved. In No­vem­ber 1986, the tran­si­tion was made from the Trea­sury Build­ing to its own premis­es in the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex. This mi­gra­tion in build­ings had a domi­no ef­fect and brought on the sec­ond batch of ma­jor changes.

In 1985, the Trea­sury Build­ing on the notes was swapped for the Bank’s new lo­ca­tion, the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex. Along with this, there were new de­pic­tions on the notes, with each de­nom­i­na­tion dis­play­ing a dif­fer­ent bird on the front, and a de­tailed de­pic­tion of var­i­ous in­dus­tries that were in­te­gral to T&T’s econ­o­my on the rear.

With the ad­vance­ment of tech­nol­o­gy, the Bank de­cid­ed to up­grade T&T’s suite of de­nom­i­na­tions, which not on­ly added se­cu­ri­ty fac­tors but pro­vid­ed an im­proved aes­thet­ic. The white bor­ders that had pre­vi­ous­ly fringed the notes were ex­changed for full-bled colours. In ad­di­tion to this, se­cu­ri­ty threads, iri­des­cent beads and ver­ti­cal num­ber­ing were in­cor­po­rat­ed, as well large tex­tured nu­mer­als to be in­clu­sive of the vi­su­al­ly im­paired per­sons.

The bills that were high­er in mon­e­tary val­ue, name­ly the $20 and $100 were giv­en one ex­tra mea­sure of pro­tec­tion in the form of foils. A hi­bis­cus and a shield holo­gram re­spec­tive­ly, which made them hard­er to repli­cate.

The lat­est mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the notes be­gan in 2006 to open the door for elec­tron­ic pro­cess­ing. The ver­ti­cal num­ber­ing sys­tem’s colour was switched from red to blue, and each de­nom­i­na­tion was giv­en a sep­a­rate fau­na wa­ter­mark. These changes, though small, fur­ther en­hanced the se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures al­ready present on the bills.

To com­mem­o­rate the Cen­tral Bank’s 50-year ju­bilee, T&T got its first in­tro­duc­tion in­to poly­mer notes with in­creased se­cu­ri­ty. The new note was strik­ing in beau­ty and colour and sparked the con­ver­sa­tion of the trans­for­ma­tion from cot­ton notes to poly­mer notes.

The fi­nal phase of changes that were made to date was the tran­si­tion from cot­ton notes to poly­mer notes which be­gan in De­cem­ber 2019. In the first stage of the re­lease, the poly­mer $100 note was in­tro­duced which led to the de­mon­e­ti­za­tion of the cot­ton $100 note. The sec­ond stage saw the in­tro­duc­tion of the $5, $10 and $20 poly­mer notes in No­vem­ber 2020, which led in­to the third stage which was the in­tro­duc­tion of the $1 and $50 notes in Feb­ru­ary 2021. At this point in time, all cot­ton bills are de­mon­e­tized and re­placed with poly­mer sub­strates which are more durable and se­cure.

Over the years, the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of these bills served as both an ad­vance­ment and com­mem­o­ra­tion of T&T’s rich his­to­ry and per­se­ver­ance against the tri­als and tribu­la­tions faced. These ex­pand­ed to in­clude com­mem­o­ra­tive is­sues of these bills, such as the cir­cu­la­tion of a lim­it­ed edi­tion $100 ban­knotes for the coun­try’s host­ing of the 60th Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing as well as the rein­tro­duc­tion of a ver­sion of the $50 bill in 2012 to cel­e­brate the coun­try’s 50th An­niver­sary as an in­de­pen­dent na­tion.