THE CENTRAL BANK ABANDONS IS FOOLISH CHEQUE PROJECT

The Tribune reported last week that the Central Bank has abandoned its foolish project to end the use of cheques in The Bahamas. The Central Bank apparently has no end of stupid projects in which it engages in the name of modernity. They do anything at the Central Bank but protect consumers. However, there is a cautionary tale in all of this modernity.  Last week there was an article from a Canadian writer about the crisis of payments systems in Canada when the whole internet went down.  You could process nothing. The writer urged people to keep cash on them.  We say the same thing here. There is no substitute for cash and the business of trying to force people to  make digital payments is a fool’s errand in our view. Quite apart from the unreliability of our internet in The Bahamas, there are  the privacy concerns of the nanny state getting to know if you went to the drug store to buy condoms or not.  So  the decision  to stop the end of cheques is wise.