CB’s soiled money destruction system undergoes modernisation
The Central Bank system of destroying unserviceable currency notes has been modernised following the replacement of a current shredding machine installed at the banking regulator with a modern Swedish-made currency disintegrator machine.
The contract to supply and install the currency disintegrator machine has been awarded to Crane Currency Company of Sweden to fast track destruction of notes unfit for circulation, regional sales director of the company Angelo Antonio Kok told the Business Times on the sidelines of the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington recently.
He revealed that the new machine worth US$ 300,000 to 400,000 will be installed at the Central Bank soon replacing the old machinery fixed in 2007.
Crane Currency has manufactured currency and security papers for more than two centuries. “We have continually supplied the United States Treasury with its currency paper since 1879” he said adding that” the company also supplies currency printing machines and shredding machines”.
Central Bank ensures that the old notes are being withdrawn from circulation and replaced with new currency notes (to improve the image of the country) while intensifying the ‘keeping currency note clean campaign’.
This countrywide programme is aimed at creating awareness among the people through the banking network in the island, a senior official of the Central Bank (CB)’s currency management division said.
The CB continuously supplies new and fit (serviceable) currency notes through the banking system to meet public demand while withdrawing soiled notes out of circulation through the same system.
Unserviceable notes cannot be re-issued to the public for circulation and the CB is compelled to destroy all these notes through a shredding machine and set on fire later, under bank supervision.
The Bank, which every year destroys millions of rupees worth of notes because of this problem, recently renewed a directive asking the public not to accept willfully damaged or disfigured currency notes, a senior Bank official said.
The CB receives an average 1,000 damaged notes per day. It has destroyed 110.5 million soiled currency notes bearing a face value of Rs.16.46 billion in an attempt to maintain its clean currency note policy in May this year.