The Trinidad and Tobago dollar

What the islands paid with before a bank

When the British took Trinidad in 1797 they found no banks and no banknotes. Money was scarce and came from Spain, Mexico, Portugal and France, in coins of uneven weight and doubtful authenticity. Merchants in London and planters in the colony often settled in the value of the produce itself, sugar.

Emancipation changed that. Planters now needed cash for wages, and the Colonial Bank, set up under the Colonial Banking Regulations of 1834, began issuing notes. Other banks issued notes too, backed by reserves of coin. A Board of Commissioners of Currency followed, and legislation of 1904 allowed government notes of $1, $2 and $1,000 to be issued in exchange for gold or silver coin. The Colonial Bank's notes still dominated.

Why the unit stayed a dollar under sterling

Sterling became the formal currency by an order in council of 1838. The dollar survived as a unit of account. Private business reckoned in dollars at 4 shillings and 2 pence each, a rate inherited from the gold sovereign's value of four Spanish dollars and 80 cents, while government offices kept pounds, shillings and pence until 1935. The Currency Interpretation Ordinance of 1934 replaced them with the dollar at the same rate.

How the regional board gave way

In 1951 the British Caribbean Currency Board took the sole right to issue notes and coins for its member territories. From 1955 the older notes were demonetised and British coins were gradually withdrawn, replaced by the board's dollar notes and a decimal coinage whose cent was worth half an old penny.

Independence came in 1962. The British Caribbean Currency Agreement of 1964, put into effect by the Currency Act of 1965, dissolved the board and cleared the way for a central bank of its own. From 1964 to 1968 Grenada also used the new dollar as legal tender, before it went back to the common currency of the Eastern Caribbean. The dollar kept the old rating of one pound to $4.80 until 1976, and on Easter weekend 1993 it moved from a fixed rate to a managed float.

When the notes went polymer

The central bank's first polymer note was a $50 issued in December 2014 for its fiftieth anniversary. The full switch began in December 2019 with a polymer $100, and the paper $100 was demonetised on 1 April 2020 as part of what the bank called a major national security exercise. Polymer $5, $10 and $20 notes followed on 2 November 2020, and $1 and $50 notes on 15 February 2021.

Notes dated before 2020 stopped being legal tender on 1 January 2022. The bank redeems them without a deadline. Every note carries the coat of arms on the front and the central bank building on the back.

An earlier $50, issued on 6 June 1977, lasted only briefly: a shipment was stolen before issue and the note was withdrawn.

Which coins are still in use

Coins came in 1966. Their reverses showed only the value until 1976, when the country became a republic and a national bird or flower was added. In 2017 the 5, 10 and 25 cent coins changed from copper-nickel to nickel-plated steel. The bank demonetised the one-cent coin in 2018, citing its cost and the low demand for it, and cash totals have been rounded since 3 July that year. It still redeems one-cent coins in multiples of five cents.