Finance Minister Ardwell Irion and his delegation along with CBCS representatives in Parliament on Friday.
PHILIPSBURG--The Caribbean guilder, which is expected to be introduced in St. Maarten and Curaçao during the second half of 2024, will have a currency code of XCG, not CMg as was originally planned, as permission was not received to use the latter.
“The currency code which is ANG will change to XCG,” Central Bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten (CBCS) St. Maarten’s director Raquel Lo Fo Wong told Members of Parliament (MPs) during a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee on Friday.
MPs during Friday's meeting.
CBCS President Richard Doornbosch later explained in response to a question from an MP that CBCS did not get the CMg currency code from the international standard settled and as a result, legislation would have to be changed to reflect the currency code XCG.
“There are a few changes that we would like to see in the legislation that has to be put to Parliament and one of them is the currency code. In the legislation that we currently have, it’s still called CMg,” he explained.
“We tried to get this currency code from the international standard settled – in the end we didn’t get it. So, they stick to the demand that if you have several countries joining one currency, that it [the currency code – Ed.] should be starting with an X. Obviously, we have made a case that in the euro area [the currency code is] starting with the [letter] E, but they didn’t treat us equally with the euro area so they stuck to the X, and so that’s a little change that we need to make to the legislation, but we don’t require this legislation to be passed before we introduce the Caribbean guilder,” Doornbosch explained.
Lo Fo Wong said that if two countries have a joint currency, the starting letter of the name of any of the countries involved cannot be used as the starting letter of the code for the currency in question. Therefore, the currency code cannot start with the letter C for Curaçao or S for St. Maarten. Instead an X has to be used.
“The common rule is that you use an X and the CG stands for Caribbean guilder. The currency code will change,” she explained.
