GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

The cost of notes re­mains at the cen­tre of pub­lic at­ten­tion as the Cen­tral Bank of T&T moves ahead with the in­tro­duc­tion of cur­ren­cy bear­ing the new na­tion­al Coat of Arms.

While the bank has stressed that the per-unit cost of pro­duc­ing the Se­ries 2026 $100 poly­mer note is low­er than that of the 2019 Se­ries, its own fi­nan­cial state­ments show an in­crease in over­all op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es re­lat­ed to cur­ren­cy pro­duc­tion.

In its 2024 an­nu­al re­port, the Cen­tral Bank’s state­ment of com­pre­hen­sive in­come for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024 show op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es for the print­ing of notes and mint­ing of coins rose to TT$16.233 mil­lion in fis­cal year 2024, com­pared with TT$12.082 mil­lion in fis­cal year 2023.

At a time when pub­lic scruti­ny of Gov­ern­ment and qua­si-Gov­ern­ment spend­ing is in­tense, the bank, in re­spose to ques­tions sent by the Busi­ness Guardian, clar­i­fied that the re­design and up­grade of the coun­try’s high­est de­nom­i­na­tion note would not come at a high­er per-unit cost than the ex­ist­ing one, de­spite the in­clu­sion of en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and a new Coat of Arms.

This may ap­pear coun­ter­in­tu­itive giv­en that the new note in­cor­po­rates up­grad­ed se­cu­ri­ty tech­nol­o­gy, but the bank at­trib­uted the sav­ings to ad­vances made since 2019 in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process of poly­mer ban­knotes.

“The cost per unit of the Se­ries 2026 $100 note is low­er than the 2019 Se­ries. Since the 2019 se­ries was in­tro­duced, im­prove­ments in tech­nol­o­gy re­lat­ed to the poly­mer sub­strate, inks and oth­er el­e­ments of pro­duc­ing the notes have re­sult­ed in low­er pro­duc­tion costs, de­spite the ad­di­tion of en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures on the note,” the bank ex­plained.

As a re­sult, the Bank main­tains that the pub­lic is not bear­ing an in­creased fi­nan­cial bur­den for the mid-se­ries up­grade, even as the note is strength­ened against coun­ter­feit­ing threats.

It was al­so asked whether the agree­ment with De La Rue Ltd, the long-stand­ing sup­pli­er in­volved in the pro­duc­tion of T&T’s ban­knotes, is a fixed-price con­tract that in­cludes the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with re­design­ing the Coat of Arms or whether ad­di­tion­al de­sign fees are be­ing charged.

The Bank how­ev­er, de­clined to pro­vide de­tails, cit­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty re­quire­ments.

An­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant is­sue re­lates to the fate of ex­ist­ing stocks of the 2019 Se­ries $100 notes, which would be phased out once the 2031 dead­line is reached.

The bank has said it is not cur­rent­ly in a po­si­tion to es­ti­mate the val­ue of ban­knotes that may ul­ti­mate­ly be ren­dered ob­so­lete or shred­ded.

How­ev­er, it em­pha­sised that the 2019 Se­ries $100 poly­mer note has an ap­prox­i­mate life cy­cle of 10 years, adding that since these notes have been is­sued in­to cir­cu­la­tion con­tin­u­ous­ly since 2019, the nat­ur­al process of with­draw­ing un­fit notes through reg­u­lar cash han­dling, sort­ing and re­place­ment means that the ma­jor­i­ty of the se­ries is ex­pect­ed to be re­moved from cir­cu­la­tion over the 12-year pe­ri­od be­tween 2019 and 2031.

In prac­ti­cal terms, this sug­gests that by the time the dead­line ar­rives, rel­a­tive­ly few 2019 Se­ries notes should re­main in ac­tive use.

While the ar­rival of the new $100 note in Au­gust 2026 has been con­firmed, the pub­lic is still await­ing clar­i­ty on when the re­main­ing de­nom­i­na­tions would be up­grad­ed.

The $1, $5, $10, $20, and $50 notes are all slat­ed for even­tu­al re­place­ment, but the bank has in­di­cat­ed that the ten­ta­tive sched­ule for is­su­ing these de­nom­i­na­tions is still be­ing pre­pared and would up­date the pub­lic over time, sug­gest­ing a phased and care­ful­ly man­aged roll­out rather than a sud­den, sys­tem-wide change.

The tran­si­tion chal­lenge is even more com­plex when it comes to coins, which typ­i­cal­ly have a much longer lifes­pan than ban­knotes.

Coins could re­main in cir­cu­la­tion for decades, mak­ing it hard­er to with­draw old­er de­signs quick­ly.

Asked how it plans to ag­gres­sive­ly pull old coins from cir­cu­la­tion to meet the 2031 dead­line, the bank has said it would de­ter­mine the best ap­proach clos­er to the time, based on the num­ber and val­ue of coins in cir­cu­la­tion.

The re­design is close­ly tied to the in­tro­duc­tion of T&T’s new Coat of Arms, which be­came valid on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2025.

Un­der the Na­tion­al Em­blems of T&T (Reg­u­la­tion) (Amend­ment) (Ex­ten­sion of Time for Use of For­mer Coat of Arms) Or­der, 2025, the for­mer Coat of Arms re­mains valid un­til Jan­u­ary 2, 2031.

Op­er­a­tional im­pact

One area of con­cern for con­sumers and busi­ness­es alike is the role of com­mer­cial banks in ac­cel­er­at­ing the tran­si­tion.

Specif­i­cal­ly, whether banks would be man­dat­ed to stop dis­pens­ing 2019 Se­ries notes through au­to­mat­ed teller ma­chines by a cer­tain date.

The bank re­ferred to its re­sponse to “Ques­tion Three” which was, “What is the es­ti­mat­ed val­ue of the ‘old’ (2019 Se­ries) ban­knote stock that will be ren­dered ob­so­lete or shred­ded once the 2031 dead­line is reached?”

That an­swer the bank pro­vid­ed to that ques­tion was, “The bank is not in a po­si­tion to pro­vide an es­ti­mate at this time. How­ev­er, the 2019 Se­ries $100 poly­mer note has an ap­prox­i­mate life cy­cle of 10 years and giv­en that these notes have been is­sued in­to cir­cu­la­tion since 2019, the nat­ur­al cy­cle of re­mov­ing un­fit notes from cir­cu­la­tion would re­sult in the ma­jor­i­ty of the 2019 Se­ries be­ing with­drawn by the bank over the 12 year pe­ri­od be­tween 2019 and 2031.”

On whether the 2026 notes would use a dif­fer­ent thick­ness or weight of poly­mer that might af­fect ex­ist­ing pri­vate sec­tor hard­ware (vend­ing ma­chines, self-check­out) the bank said the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the 2026 Se­ries – width, height, and weight would re­main the same as the 2019 Se­ries.

How­ev­er, it ad­vised, “whilst the gen­er­al look and feel of the new note will re­main the same, any note pro­cess­ing ma­chine will be re­quired to be adapt­ed/con­fig­ured in or­der to read the new se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures.”

Pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion

Pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion would play a crit­i­cal role in the tran­si­tion, es­pe­cial­ly for vul­ner­a­ble groups such as the un­banked and the el­der­ly, who may be more sus­cep­ti­ble to scams in­volv­ing the “ex­change” of old notes for new ones.

To ad­dress this risk, the bank plans to roll out a ro­bust and mul­ti-pronged “Know Your Mon­ey” cam­paign, which would in­clude in-per­son ses­sions at the Cen­tral Bank and with­in com­mu­ni­ties across T&T, as well as vir­tu­al ses­sions for those who pre­fer or re­quire re­mote ac­cess.

Tra­di­tion­al me­dia such as news­pa­pers, ra­dio, and tele­vi­sion would be used along­side dig­i­tal plat­forms, in­clud­ing the bank’s web­site and so­cial me­dia chan­nels.

A ded­i­cat­ed hot­line would al­so be es­tab­lished to re­spond to pub­lic queries, with par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion paid to those most at risk of mis­in­for­ma­tion and fraud.

“This will be aug­ment­ed by dig­i­tal me­dia chan­nels (web­site and so­cial me­dia) which have the po­ten­tial to quick­ly and im­pact­ful­ly reach large au­di­ences. The bank will al­so es­tab­lish a hot­line ded­i­cat­ed to re­spond­ing to any queries that mem­bers of the pub­lic might have,” the bank added.

It al­so re­as­sured cit­i­zens about what would hap­pen af­ter Jan­u­ary 2, 2031, when the old se­ries is ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly with­drawn, not­ing that while the ex­act process has not yet been de­ter­mined, the bank has made it clear that there would be no loss in val­ue for hold­ers of old mon­ey.