WILLEMSTAD--The Central Bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten (CBCS) believes that the introduction of the new Caribbean guilder will be completed in the second half of 2024, the Curaçao newspaper Antillians Dablad has reported.
The new currency will replace the Netherlands Antillean guilder that has been in circulation since 1952.
The introduction of a new currency has become necessary in view of the expected shortages in the stock of the various denominations of banknotes and coins of the Dutch Antillean guilder, Antilliaans Dagblad reports.
The banknote printing company that produces Antillean guilder banknotes has also ceased production of banknotes and other banknote printing companies have indicated that they are unable to produce these banknotes based on the same specifications, partly in view of the outdated security features of the Netherlands Antillean guilder banknotes, stated the Antilliaans Dagblad article.
“Changing the specifications of the Dutch Antillean guilder banknotes, resulting in the upgrading of these banknotes, is therefore necessary to be able to produce new banknotes to meet the demand. Since the cost of upgrading the old banknotes and the effect this has on payment transactions are comparable to the introduction of a new currency, it is logical that a new currency should be introduced,” Antilliaans Dagblad quotes CBCS as saying.
What the new coin will look like is not yet known. However, the Caribbean guilder coins are issued in the denominations 5 guilders, 1 guilder, 50 cents, 25 cents, 10 cents, 5 cents and 1 cent. For banknotes, the denominations are 200 guilders, 100 guilders, 50 guilders, 20 guilders and 10 guilders.
The Caribbean guilder will be legally pegged to the US dollar. The Netherlands Antillean guilder and the Caribbean guilder will be equivalent.
