2016-06-15 Wed

Officials have stated that Egyptian coins are widely counterfeited in China and as a proactive measure to tackle this serious issue, the Central Bank of Egypt will be reintroducing the 1 pound, 50 and 25 piastres currency notes once again. Other reports suggest that this move by the government could be to reduce the production costs of issuing money and increase the minting capacity to meet the growing circulation needs. There has been a shortage of change in the last few months and the bank will start issuing the new EGP 1 banknotes with a production budget of EGP 500m.

The CBE’s Printing House would print the new notes and they would be signed by Governor of the CBE Tarek Amer. Considering the shortage of change, there is a possibility that EGP 0.5 and 0.25 banknotes will also be printed, as per official reports.

EGP1, EGP 0.5, and EGP 0.25 banknotes were replaced with coins, several years back, but has been put back into circulation, a few months ago.

Though the cost of production cuts down to half in case of paper money, the lifespan of coins is much longer than banknotes.