The East Caribbean dollar

Who took over from the currency authority

Seven governments signed the agreement creating the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank on 5 July 1983, in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The bank opened on 1 October 1983. It replaced the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority, which had issued the currency since 1965: notes from that year, coins from 1981. Anguilla signed on as a full member on 1 April 1987.

The agreement gives the bank one primary objective, the stability of the currency and the integrity of the banking system. A Monetary Council set up under Article 7 of the agreement first met on 20 January 1984.

Why two British territories share it

Six members are independent: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Anguilla and Montserrat remain British Overseas Territories and belong to the currency union all the same.

Membership of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States does not bring the currency with it. The British Virgin Islands took up the British West Indies dollar in 1951 and changed officially to the US dollar in 1959. Guadeloupe and Martinique are part of France and use the euro.

Where the West Indian dollar came from

A West Indian Currency Conference in 1946 brought Barbados, British Guiana, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and the Windward Islands to agree on one decimal currency, in place of three separate currency boards. The British government introduced the British West Indies dollar in 1949 at $4.80 to the pound. For its first years it existed only as notes, beside sterling coins, until decimal cents arrived in 1955.

Trinidad and Tobago left in 1964, and in 1965 the Eastern Caribbean dollar replaced the old one at par, and British Guiana withdrew the following year. Grenada, which had used the Trinidad and Tobago dollar from 1964, came back in 1968.

Barbados left to set up its own central bank. The ECCB's own history puts that withdrawal in 1974; Wikipedia's account of the currency gives 1972.

How the peg moved from sterling

From October 1965 to July 1976 the currency was held at EC$4.80 to the pound sterling, the same rate the British West Indies dollar had carried. In July 1976 the peg was transferred to the US dollar at EC$2.70; the ECCB names the United States as the region's main trading partner and gives that as the reason for the anchor.

What the notes and coins carry

The authority's first notes, in 1965, came in 1, 5, 20 and 100 dollars, each with Pietro Annigoni's 1956 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. The central bank added a $10 note in 1985, issued its last $1 notes in 1989 and brought in the $50 in 1993. Raised Braille marks shaped as a cricket ball and stumps went onto the 10, 20, 50 and 100 dollar notes in 2012. In 2019 the bank switched to polymer notes printed in a vertical format.

A 1982 coin series ran from 1 cent to 1 dollar, and the 1 and 2 cent pieces were withdrawn in July 2015, staying legal tender until 30 June 2020.

On 9 July 2026 the bank unveiled notes without the late queen. Each member country nominated a person to appear, so the $100 pairs the economist Sir William Arthur Lewis with Sir John Compton of Saint Lucia, and the $10 pairs William Henry Bramble of Montserrat with James Ronald Webster of Anguilla. The coins are to swap her effigy for the currency union's logo.