Sierra Leone delays full switchover to new currency

Sierra Leone is to hold off the phaseout of its aged forex until finally next spring, the central lender stated.

On July 1, the West African nation stripped three noughts off its banknotes in a bid to restore confidence in the inflation-strike currency, the leone.

The previous and new notes both of those keep on being in circulation for the instant.

The transition period of time was due to finish on October 1, when the aged leone ceased to be lawful tender, but has now been extended for six months, the bank declared late Thursday.

“The changeover period of time of 1st July, 2022 to 30th September, 2022 (wherein both equally the Old Leone and the New Leone shall be lawful tender) is hereby prolonged to 31st March, 2023,” it stated on social media, without the need of elaborating.

The community will be in a position to swap the previous currency for the new a single involving April 1 and 15, 2023, it stated.

President Julius Maada Bio introduced the re-denominated forex this summer season in a bid to cease its freefall.

Buyers necessary enormous portions of the aged banknotes for the most straightforward transactions, and unscrupulous financial institution tellers occasionally pilfered notes from sealed bundles of charges.

The new 10-leone observe is the equivalent of 10,000 outdated leones and is truly worth all over 70 US cents.

Sierra Leone’s 8 million persons are living in a person of the poorest nations in the entire world. The previous British colony ranks 182 out of 189 nations on the United Nations’s Human Development Index.

The economic system, which is heavily dependent on its diamonds and other mineral wealth, was devastated by a civil war that ran from 1991 to 2002 and still left about 120,000 useless.

Endeavours at rebuilding have been established again by an Ebola epidemic in 2014-2016, a drop in entire world commodity price ranges, the coronavirus epidemic and the war in Ukraine.

© 2022 AFP