Trinidad’s new $100 bill ready

(Trinidad Guardian) The new poly­mer $100 ban­knotes have been print­ed and are ready for dis­tri­b­u­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has an­nounced.

“The notes are more than ad­e­quate…ready for the changeover,” Im­bert said last Fri­day in the Low­er House.

Im­bert was con­clud­ing de­bate on pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to fa­cil­i­tate the tran­si­tion from the cur­rent $100 bill to a re­place­ment note which has spe­cial se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures.

Gov­ern­ment’s Cab­i­net meet­ing last Thurs­day ap­proved plans for a changeover to the new poly­mer bills. This in­volves re­demp­tion at banks of $100 bills de­signed in the “old” for­mat.

Last Thurs­day Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the re­place­ment $100 note will aid the re­duc­tion of fraud and coun­ter­feit­ing and will un­der­mine the use of stored cash to fund crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. He said cul­prits of­ten op­er­at­ed with $100 notes.

The new bills al­so car­ry Braille fea­tures. He pro­ject­ed the poly­mer bills would be in cir­cu­la­tion in two weeks in­clud­ing a pe­ri­od when both old and new would co-ex­ist be­fore re­demp­tion con­cludes.

Young re­vealed speedy moves to de­bate leg­is­la­tion for the changeover. This in­volved de­bate in both the Low­er and Up­per Hous­es of Par­lia­ment be­tween Fri­day and yes­ter­day.

Last Fri­day the bill was de­bat­ed in the Low­er House for al­most three hours. It was passed—with­out amend­ments—just af­ter 10 pm with unan­i­mous sup­port from both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion MPs.

Pre­sent­ing the bill were Im­bert, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Young. Op­po­si­tion MPs David Lee and Gan­ga Singh replied. The bill was de­bat­ed fur­ther in the Up­per House yes­ter­day.

Con­clud­ing Low­er House de­bate last Fri­day, Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment had learned from the mis­takes of oth­er coun­tries which al­so did changeovers, some of whom did not have enough ban­knotes for their pro­ce­dures.

“Those coun­tries—such as Mau­ri­tius—didn’t have enough, they had to print as they went along. But that in­ef­fi­cien­cy re­gard­ing new bank notes has been ad­dressed here (in TT),” he said.

“The bank notes have been print­ed and are ready for dis­tri­b­u­tion, more than ad­e­quate—they’ve been de­signed, print­ed and are ready for the changeover.”

Im­bert said that there are cur­rent­ly 80 mil­lion pieces of the 100 bills in cir­cu­la­tion in T&T and the Gov­ern­ment print­ed enough new notes to com­pen­sate for the up­com­ing changeover.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the bill was passed in the Low­er House last Fri­day night, a ship­ment of the new notes was trans­port­ed yes­ter­day to the Cen­tral Bank’s lo­ca­tion in Port-of-Spain. UK-based print­ers De La Rue han­dled the print­ing of the cur­ren­cy.

The notes were brought to the CBTT’s Ed­ward Street en­trance via con­tain­er, sur­round­ed by ex­treme­ly heavy se­cu­ri­ty in­clud­ing army per­son­nel on the ground and air guard es­cort over­head.

The Wright­son Road en­trance to the city near­est to CBTT was cor­doned off. Po­lice al­so re­strict­ed ac­cess around In­de­pen­dence Square and sur­round­ing ar­eas. This caused ex­treme traf­fic grid­lock along cer­tain routes all morn­ing.

The notes were brought in while the Up­per House de­bate on the changeover was tak­ing place, near­by.