Dear Editor,

I was in a restaurant recently buying lunch when I overheard an argument between the cashier and a patron. The patron was administering indignant reproach to the cashier for refusing to accept 10 $1.00 coins as part of the total payment for her order. The cashier was adamant that the establishment doesn’t accept $1.00 coins. The patron was given a $10.00 coin by her friend, which she begrudgingly handed to the cashier while grumbling about a lack of respect for elders and stating that $1.00 coins are valid legal tender and could not be refused.

Witnessing this peculiar exchange stirred within me an ambivalence between two opposing positions.

1) The patron was correct that the $1.00 coins are valid legal tender, thus the restaurant did not have any legal standing to refuse them as payment for her meal.

Section 10 of the Bank of Jamaica Act establishes the currency of Jamaica as the dollar and states that it consists of notes and coins issued by the Bank of Jamaica.

Section 15 provides that a tender of payment of money (a) if made in notes, shall be legal tender for the payment of any amount; and (b) if made in coins, shall be legal tender for the payment of an amount not exceeding the face value of a maximum of 50 coins in any combination of denominations. What this simply means is that you should not make a payment with more than 50 coins. It further states that only a coin that is bent, mutilated, or defaced shall not be legal tender.

Section 16 of the Act gives the minister of finance the power to direct that specific notes or coins are no longer legal tender and remove them from circulation.

In February of 2018 the Bank of Jamaica officially demonetised the one-cent ($0.01), 10-cent ($0.10), and 25-cent ($0.25) coins. Following that action, the $1.00 coin became the lowest denomination in circulation. Currently, anyone conducting business in Jamaica is legally bound to accept Jamaican $1.00 coins as legal tender.

2) With the realisation that $1.00, the unit of our currency, is of so little real value that it can literally purchase nothing, a restaurant saw it fit to refuse accepting it.

This is where I turned my lawyer brain off and focused solely on practicality and reality. The harsh truth is a Jamaican dollar cannot even buy a sweetie or icy mint. Gone are the days when one would even stoop to pick up a $1.00 coin off the ground. Just as it was in 2018 when the Bank of Jamaica recalled the one-cent, 10-cent, and 25-cent coins because they were rarely used by the public and the cost of production exceeded the face value, the same situation now exists with the $1.00 coin.

The likelihood, however, that the $1.00 coin will be withdrawn from circulation is virtually nil. This for two reasons. Firstly, there must be a note or coin corresponding to the unit of the national currency. Secondly, the demonetisation of the $1.00 coin would be a public admission to decades of failure by successive governments of Jamaica to prevent the devaluation of the Jamaican dollar against foreign currencies and curb inflation.

We are far removed from hyperinflation, which has caused other nations to abandon their existing currency in favour of a new one, like Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Brazil have done in the past; however, a long-term analysis of the decline of the Jamaican dollar paints a grim picture for the future.

Until we can arrest the slide of the dollar towards worthlessness and bring it back to a place of strength, there is slim chance of a future in which keeping a Jamaican dollar coin makes sense.

Payton Patterson

paytonpatterson97@gmail.com