Your old Sh1,000 notes will now become briquettes - CBK - Capital Business
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The pieces of Sh1,000 notes returned have been declared valueless and were already being shredded to make briquettes, he said/MOSES MUOKI

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Your old Sh1,000 notes will now become briquettes – CBK

The pieces of Sh1,000 notes returned have been declared valueless and were already being shredded to make briquettes, he said/MOSES MUOKI

NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 2 – The Central Bank of Kenya on Wednesday announced it had received 209,661,000 pieces of the old Sh1,000 notes worth Sh209 billion by September 30 when the largest legal tender was rendered valueless and replaced with a new one.

CBK Governor Patrick Njoroge told a news conference that some 7.4 million pieces worth Sh7.4 billion were never returned.

Sections of the media had reported that more than Sh200 billion was not returned, an issue he dismissed as not factual.

The pieces of Sh1,000 notes returned have been declared valueless and were already being shredded to make briquettes, he said.

One briquette is made of 1 million notes.

“We are making briquettes with the old Sh1,000. Basically, we are shredding and turning them into powder, then condensing them into briquettes,” Njoroge said.

“Demonetisation has been successful,” he declared of the exercise that was aimed at ridding the country of illicit cash.

The pieces of Sh1,000 notes returned have been declared valueless and were already being shredded to make briquettes, he said/MOSES MUOKI

He told journalists there were a total of 161,082,470 transactions including through cheques during the demonetisation period.

The banking regulator also flagged 3,172 transactions due to their suspicious nature.

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Overall, Njoroge termed the demonetization process successful, saying it achieved the mission it was set out to do.

“We wanted to deal with counterfeit money on the economy and we succeeded because most of that amount is now worthless. We also wanted to deal with illicit cash flow and we have managed,” he said.

On counterfeits, Njoroge said unscrupulous people have already attempted to master the new notes to make counterfeits but they are failing.

“We are looking into this situation and are addressing it.”

Njoroge has also refuted claims that the demonetization process resulted into inflation in the economy, saying that there was no such thing, “the old notes were being exchanged, meaning there was no excess money in the economy.”

He said the process did not affect the country’s inflation which stood that 3.8 percent.

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