GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

De­spite the De­cem­ber 31, 2019 dead­line giv­en by the Cen­tral Bank to have the old $100 notes changed to the new poly­mer bill, some busi­ness­es have al­ready stopped ac­cept­ing the old bill.

Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion Ra­jiv Diptee said while such as a de­ci­sion is up to the in­di­vid­ual busi­ness­es he said the de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment the new notes could not come at a worse time giv­en the very hec­tic Christ­mas sea­son.

“While we are ad­vis­ing our mem­bers to re­spect the law our mem­bers have ex­pressed con­cern re­gard­ing cash in tran­sit for in­stance if they wait un­til De­cem­ber 31 to rush to car­ry their monies to the bank.

“We have not re­ceived any di­rec­tive from the Cen­tral Bank or the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion if busi­ness­es will be giv­en an ex­tend­ed grace pe­ri­od to change over their cash,” Diptee ex­plained.

He said su­per­mar­kets have al­ready spent a great deal of mon­ey on in­ven­to­ry and there is the ad­di­tion­al con­cern that stock will be left on their hands.

“We are try­ing to push re­al­ly hard for su­per­mar­kets to have a good sea­son but if there is a liq­uid­i­ty crush peo­ple may have less mon­ey to spend,” Diptee added.

Chair­man of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­mer­ce, Gabriel Faria de­scribed the change as great move but al­so ques­tioned the need to im­ple­ment the new bill dur­ing the hec­tic end of year time.

“It may have been bet­ter to sched­ule it at a less hec­tic time of the year but the au­thor­i­ties may have been told by some ex­perts that this time is more con­ducive to col­lect the old cur­ren­cy based on the amount of cash in cir­cu­la­tion,” he said.

On its Face­book page is­land Hob­bies is­sued a no­tice to its cus­tomers that it is no longer ac­cept­ing the old $100 note.

“Due to the un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances to the re­tail in­dus­try at Xmas time con­cern­ing the short time line to change con­ven­tion­al $100 to the new bill, we have no choice but to put a dead­line to our es­tab­lish­ment in ac­cept­ing the old notes. “Our Shop es­pe­cial­ly, re­mains very busy through the sea­son and well in­to the new year and the ridicu­lous time line is in­ad­e­quate. There­fore, our cut off in ac­cept­ing the old $100 note is Sun­day De­cem­ber 15, 2019. Af­ter which we will no longer be ac­cept­ing the old note,” the no­tice said.

While apol­o­gis­ing for any in­con­ve­nience caused Is­land Hob­bies not­ed that the move by Gov­ern­ment has cre­at­ed “an un­re­al­is­tic in­con­ve­nience that has been forced down the throats of all cit­i­zens.”

The de­ci­sion by Is­land Hob­bies have been met with both crit­i­cism and sup­port on the part of some cit­i­zens.

While some not­ed that the busi­ness has to do what ever it can to se­cure its fu­ture and that of its em­ploy­ees oth­ers how­ev­er, com­ment­ed that Is­land Hob­bies was be­ing “ridicu­lous.”

“I hope peo­ple who shop­ping with cash will find oth­er stores. You worse than the Gov­ern­ment,” an­oth­er per­son com­ment­ed.

Oth­er busi­ness­es have de­cid­ed to stop ac­cept­ing the old notes by the end of next week or ear­ly the fol­low­ing week.

Liv­ing Wa­ters on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain is ex­pect­ed to stop ac­cept­ing the old notes by next Fri­day.

Busi­ness-own­ers said they were left with lit­tle or no choice but to im­ple­ment such dras­tic mea­sures.

“It is re­al­ly dif­fi­cult if not un­re­al­is­tic for busi­ness­es to wait to the very end..De­cem­ber 31...to change their cash. It is sim­ply im­pos­si­ble be­cause we will be left with old mon­ey on our hands.

“Peo­ple with coun­ter­feit cash will al­so want to dump that on us and what will be our sit­u­a­tion then?” one busi­ness own­er asked.

He said while he wel­comed the move to in­tro­duce the new se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures in the lo­cal cur­ren­cy, he be­lieved there should have been more con­sul­ta­tion with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.