Somalia will get new bank notes for the first time in a more than a quarter century with the help of the International Monetary Fund.
The country will print official bank notes in an effort to combat counterfeits.
The IMF says up to 98 percent of local bank notes in the Horn of Africa nation are counterfeit with the remaining 2 percent printed in 1990-91 still circulating and tattered.
In the absence of trustworthy national currency, US dollars have become primary bank notes in circulation. According to the Central Bank of Somalia, most medium and large-scale transactions are undertaken in US dollars.
The Bank’s governor Bashir Issa Ali says the government needs to raise $60 million to fund the printing program and expects much of it to come from a donors’ conference slated for May in London.
The printing program is with some challenges. one is how the new currency will affect imports and exports and the remittance economy, where Somalia receives as much as $2.3 billion a year aided by Somalis living abroad.
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