It is now official. Ghana is going to have larger denomination currency notes before the end of year. Last Friday, the Bank of Ghana - Ghana’s central bank - sent invitations to media houses in Accra to attend a briefing tomorrow, Tuesday November 12, 2002.

The invitation letter to the media briefing, a copy of which ADM received on Friday night said, "The Bank of Ghana will introduce before the end of year 10,000 and 20,000 denomination of the cedi notes."

The new notes according to GNA, were to have been introduced at the beginning of the new cocoa purchasing season in October, but were delayed. No reasons were given for the delay GNA Business Desk quoting Bank of Ghana sources says the notes might be out immediately after an intensive education programme.

The Bank is spending around 113 billion cedis to print the new denominations that include enhanced security features for the new 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000-cedi notes.

The new denominations are intended to reduce the huge volume of cash that people have to carry on them in their transactions and also reduce the risk associated with handling huge volumes of cash. "The exercise is important as it will educate the public on the specific things such as the security features and exact design and nature of the new notes, so that no one fakes them.

The education is also to help in ensuring that cedi notes are not mutilated and destroyed unnecessarily resulting in a short life span of the notes," said the GNA source. Mutilated notes usually lose their security features become soft, light, dirty or defaced and are consequently withdrawn from circulation.

An average of about nine million mutilated notes, says the GNA Business Desk, are withdrawn from circulation each month. In August alone, 16.5 million notes, the equivalent of 39.7 billion cedis was destroyed. The Bank's Ladies Association already has a programme - Keep the Cedi Clean - that educates, especially traders and business operators at markets especially on the proper handling of bank notes.

All the major banks in the country have introduced Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) and recently three banks introduced the e-card, all in an attempt to reduce the amount of cash carried by individuals and also to help encourage the banking habit.

This official announcement puts to rest months of speculation on whether bigger denominations would be introduced or not.