The Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go has sus­pend­ed the roll­out of its 2025 se­ries $100 poly­mer ban­knote, fol­low­ing a di­rec­tive from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to halt pro­duc­tion of notes fea­tur­ing the re­vised Coat of Arms.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the Cen­tral 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 pub­lic cir­cu­la­tion by Sep­tem­ber 2025. It was to in­clude a larg­er se­cu­ri­ty strip, holo­graph­ic el­e­ments, and a new Coat of Arms fea­tur­ing the na­tion­al in­stru­ment—the steel­pan—re­plac­ing the three ships as­so­ci­at­ed with Christo­pher Colum­bus.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank, the changes were be­ing in­tro­duced at no ad­di­tion­al cost and aimed to en­hance se­cu­ri­ty and in­cor­po­rate lo­cal cul­tur­al sym­bols. The bank has not in­di­cat­ed whether the new time­line will be ad­just­ed or if the de­sign will be re­vised again. It said it will con­tin­ue to keep the pub­lic in­formed on de­vel­op­ments.

The change to the Coat of Arms was an­nounced in Au­gust 2024 by then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who ar­gued the coun­try’s sym­bols should re­flect its peo­ple and cul­ture rather than its colo­nial past.

The up­dat­ed em­blem was of­fi­cial­ly adopt­ed in Feb­ru­ary this year, fol­low­ing par­lia­men­tary ap­proval. Guardian Me­dia was un­able to reach Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo up to late yes­ter­day.