…to reduce cost of printing
Governor of the central bank, Dr. Ernest Addison, has said that very soon the Bank of Ghana will phase out the country’s two smaller currency notes, the GH¢1 and GH¢2 bills, and encourage the use of coins in order to reduce the cost of printing.
The GH¢2 note, which has a portrait of Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, is currently not in wide circulation.
Answering a question posed by a journalist on why there seem to be shortage of the GH¢2 denominations on the market during a press meeting with the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in Accra, Dr. Addison said the bank has stopped the printing of the note because it has finished serving the commemorative purpose for which it was introduced.
“You would recall that this was a note that was issued as commemorative notes. So commemorative notes are not notes that you continue to print. And so, what we have done in the last two years is to introduce the GH¢2 Ghana coin. And the GH¢2 Ghana coins are circulating and you would expect that, eventually, they will play the role the GH¢2 notes are playing,” he said.
He emphasised that both the GH¢1 notes and the GH¢2 notes will eventually leave the scene to make way for the coins, as frequent use of the two bills has resulted in many being damaged beyond repair, hence, increasing the bank’s cost, as they have to be reprinted and reintroduced unto the market.
“Both the GH¢1 notes and the GH¢2 notes will eventually be phased out because they are not cost effective, in terms of the printing cost. They are notes that circulates very widely and they come back very torn and soiled, and that makes it difficult for our currency processing machines to process them. We have bales and bales of GH¢1 notes which we are not able to process. So, the view in the longer term is to, more or less, get the GH¢1 and GH¢2 notes out and use the coins,” he said.
About the GH¢2 note
The GH¢2 note has the portrait of Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and a commemorative text inscribed as “Centenary of the birth of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah”, specially introduced to celebrate the year-long anniversary of the visionary leader.
Former governor of the central bank, the late Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah Arthur, said at its inauguration that the: “the introduction of the new note will ease the immense pressure on the GHc1.00 note. He also said the “excessive use of the One Cedi note reduced its quality, thereby, defeating the Clean Note Policy of the Bank of Ghana.”
