By Kebba Ansu Manneh
Bauh Saidy, Governor of the Central Bank of The Gambia, has emphatically denied the claim from the populace that there is shortage of coins in the country. His response to the claim is in contrary to wide spreading speculations around town especially from the corridors of apprentices, shopkeepers and certain supermarkets claiming insufficient coins circulation.
Governor Saidy made this disclosure at the quarterly Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting of the Central Bank held in Banjul on Wednesday.
Recently commuters and shoppers have been made to believe that the country has run out of coin prompting many commuters and shoppers having confrontations with apprentices and shopkeepers over coins in the country.
“This information that there are no coins in the country is not true, in fact, I do get calls from people asking me but I always tell them that it is not true. What we have in the vault, and recently we received additional eight million dalasis from Royal Mint, will last for many years,” CBG Governor revealed.
He added: “There is no shortage of coins here but Central Bank cannot go out in the streets giving out coins, people must come and demand for coins. We have the exchange window at the banking hall and if people come and demand for coins they will get,” it.
According to him, customers visiting supermarkets can attest to it that there are coins in the country because they are no more given candies but coins, adding that this is a clear indication that there are enough coins in the country.
Governor Saidy, continued to disclosed that the country is equally having enough stock of currency notes, noting that it is only in the Gambia where people will demand for new notes only to go and toast it to the musicians.
“These notes are very expensive to print because we spend millions of dalasis on printing notes and the responsibility of the central bank like any other country is not to put out fresh notes. The responsibility of the central banks is making sure that clean, decent and reusable notes are put out,” Governor Saidy expressed.
According to him, Central Bank is the only institution mandated by the law to print and issued notes and coins in the country, noting that the bank is empowered by an Act to issue clean reusable notes and anyone who want to change his/her soiled and mutilated notes can do so at the bank.
GBG Governor also observed that many people will rather visit the bank to demand for bunches of fresh new notes instead of changing soiled and mutilated notes, arguing that giving bunches of new notes to customers is out of the mandate of the bank as an institution.
He said it is the duty of each and every sundry to manage well the currencies in their hands, arguing that currency notes are not note books neither meant for cleaning once hands.
