The New Ghana Cedi and the Ghana Pesewa which will start circulating in July will, according to the Managing Director of Stanbic Ghana Alhassan Andani enable “Ghana join the League of Nations whose currencies are well recognized and highly valued in the world.”
Mr. Andani whose bank organized an educational session on the new currencies says the expected recognition “which will be our new store value needs to be protected and guarded very jealously” adding that it will be the responsibility of all Ghanaians to protect it.
The Stanbic boss said as a financial institution it forms part of their social responsibility to be part of the public education exercise on and about the new currency. He assured the public and the bank’s customers that all the required logistics to operate smoothly as a bank after the redenomination have been met.
Stanbic’s “Currency Re-denomination Impact Analysis Workshop” was aimed among others at educating their customers on the changes that will take place after the exercise has been carried out.
Mr. Alhassan Andani urged participants to accept the new system which has been undertaken in so many other countries because the new currency will represent the country’s integrity of wealth system as a nation.
Mr Ryan Cedar of Standard Bank Group in South Africa and who has been involved in re-denomination exercises in other parts of Africa said there will be much more coins than notes after re-denomination and wondered whether the country as a whole is prepared to use coins for transactions.
He also noted that there will be problems with storage because of the volumes.
Mr. Cedar said, as a bank they have outlined a number of processes to make way for the new currency with a currency distribution strategy to the branches in the week leading to the conversion and the actual conversion between Saturday 30th June 2007 and Monday 1st July.