New $5, $10 and $20 poly­mer notes will be dis­trib­uted to com­mer­cial banks from Mon­day, Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Alvin Hi­laire an­nounced at a me­dia brief­ing. He said the $1 and $50 poly­mer notes will be in­tro­duced in Jan­u­ary

The new poly­mer notes will co-cir­cu­late with the ex­ist­ing pa­per-based (cot­ton) notes and both will be le­gal ten­der un­til at least the end of 2021 when a de­ci­sion will be tak­en on de­mon­eti­sa­tion of the cot­ton notes. The three new notes fol­low the is­suance of $100 poly­mer notes and de­mon­eti­sa­tion of cot­ton-based $100 bills last De­cem­ber.

Head of Bank­ing Op­er­a­tions at the Cen­tral Bank Sharon Vil­lafan said among the ad­van­tages of the poly­mer notes are im­proved dura­bil­i­ty—they last two and a half times longer than cot­ton notes. They al­so have stronger se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures to pro­tect against forgery and more de­fined tac­tile fea­tures which pro­vide im­proved ac­cess for the vi­su­al­ly im­paired.

Hi­laire said the in­tro­duc­tion of the new notes comes as the Cen­tral Bank ex­plores ways to re­duce the costs of its cur­ren­cy op­er­a­tion and moves to­ward digi­ti­sa­tion. He said there are plans to re­duce re­liance on notes and coins as a while.

In the com­ing weeks, the Cen­tral Bank will host Know Your Mon­ey ses­sions to fa­mil­iarise the pub­lic with the fea­tures of the new notes.

More in­for­ma­tion is avail­able via email at in­fo@cen­tral-bank.org.tt or on the Cen­tral Bank's Face­book page.