Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has rub­bished so­cial me­dia claims that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment plans to rein­tro­duce the pre­vi­ous cot­ton $100 ban­knotes which were re­placed with poly­mer notes in 2019.

The “rein­tro­duc­tion” claims al­leged that the rein­tro­duc­tion of the pre­vi­ous cot­ton notes was “com­ing” and that was why the UNC Gov­ern­ment was “hold­ing off” on in­tro­duc­ing the up­dat­ed poly­mer notes with the na­tion­al steel­pan in­stru­ment on them.

Un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, the old cot­ton ver­sion of the $100 notes was changed in 2019 to poly­mer. Af­ter last year’s change of the Coat of Arms to re­flect the steel­pan as T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment, it was an­nounced in Feb­ru­ary that a new ver­sion of the poly­mer notes with the steel­pan on them was to have been is­sued in Sep­tem­ber.

Just over a week ago, how­ev­er, the Cen­tral Bank an­nounced the sus­pen­sion of the roll­out of the 2025 se­ries of $100 poly­mer ban­knote, fol­low­ing a di­rec­tive from Tan­coo to halt pro­duc­tion of notes fea­tur­ing the re­vised Coat of Arms.

The so­cial me­dia video claim that the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to rein­tro­duce the pre­vi­ous cot­ton $100 notes fol­lowed the sus­pen­sion an­nounce­ment of the up­dat­ed poly­mer notes.

When asked whether the Gov­ern­ment is in­deed plan­ning the rein­tro­duc­tion of the cot­ton notes, Tan­coo said, “That is ab­solute­ly un­true. While this Gov­ern­ment re­mains fo­cused on re­build­ing this coun­try, there seems to be peo­ple with over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tions and ma­l­in­tent. But I’m con­fi­dent Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are as­tute enough to con­tin­ue to recog­nise and re­ject these po­lit­i­cal mis­chief mak­ers.”

Tan­coo didn’t re­ply to queries on the rea­son for sus­pend­ing pro­duc­tion of the up­dat­ed poly­mer notes, whether Gov­ern­ment may add to the notes’ fea­tures apart from the steel­pan—or if he would ad­dress the mat­ter in Par­lia­ment to­day in his wind-up to de­bate on the Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill.

Both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment meet to­day

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (HOR) meets to­day to con­tin­ue last Wednes­day’s de­bate on the Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tion (Bud­get) Bill 2025. This will add $3.2 bil­lion to the 2025 Bud­get of $59.741b

The House meets from 10.30 am. The Sen­ate al­so meets from 10 am on bills which the HOR passed last week to ex­pand ac­cess to the Chil­dren’s Life Fund and to re­peal the law for the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty.

It’s the first time for the new term that the HOR and Sen­ate will meet si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The HOR meets in its North cham­ber of the Red House and the Sen­ate in its South cham­ber. It will be the Sen­ate’s first work­ing sit­ting af­ter the 13th Par­lia­ment was launched on May 23.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous sit­tings are ex­pect­ed ahead since the Par­lia­ment’s of­fi­cial mid-year re­cess be­gins the sec­ond week of Ju­ly.

To­day’s HOR sit­ting is ex­pect­ed to be a long one, as all MPs are pre­pared to speak. Leader of House Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath couldn’t say for cer­tain if de­bate would end to­day.

“We have a lot of speak­ers to go still. Min­is­ters from the Sen­ate may come to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to en­ter the de­bate as well. So, it’s some­what pre­ma­ture to say if de­bate in­deed ends Mon­day,” Padarath.

In last Wednes­day’s de­bate on the bill, Op­po­si­tion speak­ers had called on Tan­coo for an­swers to ques­tions aris­ing from his ad­dress about the al­lo­ca­tion of sums to the 28 di­vi­sions shar­ing the $3.2b.

This in­clud­ed if the $13.7m al­lo­cat­ed to Par­lia­ment for salaries and cost of liv­ing al­lowances is al­so large­ly for back­pay for UNC MPs who were in Op­po­si­tion when salary in­creas­es were man­dat­ed by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s 120th re­port. Tan­coo was al­so asked to say if $2m al­lo­cat­ed for fees for the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s di­vi­sion, for its Privy Coun­cil Ap­peal of the case against PNM’s for­mer Fi­nance min­is­ter, was for re­im­burs­ing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al in the mat­ter.

Al­so on the HOR agen­da is the nom­i­na­tion of As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wayne Mys­tar to act in the of­fice of Deputy CoP.