Tuesday, 3 June 2014

Makes no cents

It has been almost a month now after the Central Bank of Barbados's decision to cease issuing one-cent coins.
 
The one cent coin going the way of the dodo bird

This went into effect on May 7, 2014 after weeks of sensitizing Barbadians about the demise of their one cent coins.
The one cent coin will remain legal tender indefinitely, but will no longer be produced because of economic reasons - it takes five cents to mint one single cent. That meant that it cost more to mint a cent than its face value.
A rounding up or rounding down process will now be in effect until prices are regulated ....therefore consumers will either lose or gain up to two cents on some of their transactions.
 Until all the prices are changed to no longer reflect single cents, your bill total will be rounded up or down accordingly to the nearest five cents.
The individual prices remain the same and only the total bill is affected by the change.
However, if paying by debit/credit card or by cheque, the transaction will not be subject to the rounding process....only cash payments of currency notes and coins will be rounded.

 "Small Change" flyers displayed prominently at point-of-sale cash registers

So far the new system has been working okay with no problems or hiccups.
It is expected that the one cent coins will go out of circulation in another five years.
I exchanged the cents I had in my coin purse at the bank a few days ago....fifteen cents....I will keep the remaining three cents as a souvenir.
The coins collected by the Central Bank will be used as scrap, which will then be sold off.
On its own the cent had no purchasing power since nothing costs one cent anymore, and was really only there to make exact payments for cash transactions.


The poor lowly one cent will be no more....gone with the wind...a thing from the past....a blurred memory.
Folks had no respect for the one cent coin, they refused to spend them, they kept them lying around at home saving them in large jars and tins before exchanging them at the bank and thus they were not being circulated like they should have been....the Central Bank was minting large volumes of these coins annually to keep the supply fulfilled....what a pity.
Barbados has now joined other countries like Australia, Israel, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada and Nordic countries that have also replaced/removed their lowest coin denominations from their currency lineup.

I will probably be regaling my grandchildren with stories like "when I was growing up, we had one cent coins" or something along those lines.


More info at the links below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Op7XPhVHKg 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVev0VPfi5s 

http://www.centralbank.org.bb/WEBCBB.nsf/webpage/E05EEE0A600F31A504257C860045F942?OpenDocument 
 

4 comments:

  1. It's quite a few years now since we lost our one and two cent coins but some people still have some. They are great for putting under a wobbly table leg. What amazes me is that after all these years we still see things advertised for $9.99. Who are they trying to kid.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's very interesting about prices still being quoted with 99cents at the end...I will wait and see what happens here.
      Thanks for the wobbly table leg fix info....message received and stored for future use.

      Delete
  2. I have experience of this in NZ of course and it works with no problems. It would make life a lot lighter in our pocket if we didn't have them in the UK too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think most folks here are relieved that the cents are being taken out of the local currency.
      Who knows...maybe the UK will follow in due course. With us being Little England, we usually end up copying whatever the UK does, but not this time.

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