The phrase los­ing mon­ey to make mon­ey has tak­en on a lit­er­al mean­ing for the Cen­tral Bank, giv­en that every five-cent piece pro­duced re­sults in a net loss for the Trea­sury. High met­al prices and mint­ing fees have made the coin’s pro­duc­tion un­sus­tain­able.

By even­tu­al­ly de­com­mis­sion­ing this de­nom­i­na­tion, T&T could re­claim rough­ly $2.9 mil­lion each year, prov­ing that some­times the best way to grow the econ­o­my is to stop man­u­fac­tur­ing its least valu­able parts.

In an emailed re­sponse to queries from the Busi­ness Guardian, the Cen­tral Bank ex­plained every $0.05 coin costs $0.24 to pro­duce, near­ly five times the coin’s ac­tu­al face val­ue.