The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, on March 17, 2020 told Parliament that the cost of printing the GH¢100 and GH¢200 noted is $8.97 million.
According to the finance Minister, the amount was made up of $4.45 million and $4.53 million for the GH¢100 and the GH¢200 cedi notes respectively.
Ken Ofori-Atta added that information obtained from the Bank of Ghana (BoG) showed that an amount of $5.39 million of the total contract had been paid.
“Mr Speaker, the Bank of Ghana is in the process of finalizing their financial statements for 2019. Further details of the cost of the currency management will be provided in the bank’s financial statements,” he stated.
The Finance Minister’s response was in response to a question by Member of Parliament for Lambussie, Mr Edward Kaale-Ewola Dery on how much it cost the state to print the new GH¢100 and GH¢200 notes.
The law marker also asked the minister if he did not consider that printing the entire notes could encourage people to keep their money at home, thereby reducing savings and deposits at banks.
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Futhermore, On the question of whether the printing of the new currencies contradicted the efforts by the government to introduce a cashless economy, Mr Ofori-Atta said the emergence of technology had made cashless society almost inevitable.
“Larger denominations are needed within the context of all that we do. I am not really sure what ill is being done by having higher denominations but the inevitability of us being cashless is an issue of technology and I do not see how it is going to affect the velocity in which cash flows in our country,” he said.
