Africa 24

 “I heard that we are not going to use the long paper money in New Year,” says a young man at Cline Town in Freetown.

“It means New Year; new money to be used by us; the long papers are disappearing by January.”

Sierra Leone is currently using two sizes of her domestic currency with the old notes papers longer in size than the new leone notes.

Like the young man, many Sierra Leoneans don’t yet seem to believe government news that it is going to wipe out the old currency, or redenominate it to the new leone.

The new currency of Sierra Leone was printed each with only a single number while the zeros in thousands are removed completely.

The new leone note, for example, of 10 now reads as ten leone, thereby eliminating the three zeros.

But 10,000 leones which was used as the old legal tender is still equivalent to the new 10 leone in market value, but only the pronunciation changes.

Sierra Leone’s then bank governor, Professor Kelfala Kallon, had ordered some containers paper notes of the new leone into the country last year.

The move was to redenominate the local currency to either value on it and to be able to minimize the inflation in the country.

The bank governor had said: “We want to stop people holding bulky banknotes but which don’t have much value; so reducing the zeros in our currency is a wise though decision.”

And when the current bank governor, Dr Ibrahim Stevens, took over as Bank of Sierra Leone head, after the sacking of professor Kallon, Governor Stevens had further strengthened talks of eliminating the old leone, Sierra Leone curreny in public.

But there’re still some doubts by Sierra Leoneans of the possibility of seeing the use of new leone alone by people in the country starting by early next year.

“Let’s wait and see till New Year if we are only going to use the new leone. Maybe government is going to print out some new leones to be in circulation,”

“Because it is clear that now the old leone is plenty than the new leone printed in 2022,” said another man who is a friend of the young man.

It’s left just about 25 days to go as the New Year nears but government has not yet confirmed that they are going to print some new leones to replace the old leone currency.

But the current Bank Governor, Dr. Stevens, has earlier told parliament that by December 31st this year, the old leone will have been banned from being used by the public.