No Marked Effect Of Penny Shortage

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31211, 8 November 1966, Page 15

No Marked Effect Of Penny Shortage

The shortage of pennies in New Zealand has not had any marked effects on business in Christchurch. Some of the banks’ reserves of pennies are much lower than usual, and some of the banks are “rationing” pennies to customers in that they are not allowing sudden increases in usual demands.

“I think it is true to say that Christchurch has managed pretty well so far because business staffs are not hoarding pennies. The pennies are being kept in circulation," the accountant of one bank said. The Christchurch branch of the Reserve Bank does not yet know when the six million pennies purchased from Australia will be put into circirculation in New Zealand or what proportion of them will be circulated to banks in Christchurch. “I am certain that if there were a sudden, desperate shortage in Christchurch that I could call on Wellington for assistance,” the local manager of the Reserve Bank (Mr E. C. Robinson) said. A few of the banks reported fewer silver coins in circulation— particularly sixpences and shillings. Department stores, groceries. butchers and bakers, the Post Office and hotels report no “real difficulty” with pen- | nies.

The consensus is that many families are collecting sets of the coinage before the change to decimal Coinage next July and the normal saving of pennies and silver in bottles for Christmas has aggravated the position. “No appeal has been necessary. but I feel that if the public were asked to collect all the pennies and small coins in their homes and put them into circulation —then the response would be staggering. I could lay my hands on a good collection of halfpennies, pennies, threepenny bits and sixpences lying round in my own home,” one bank accountant commented. “Provided that there is no mad hoarding of coins, particularly of pennies, just because there is talk of a shortage, I think we will manage reasonably well.” said the accountant for a group of chain ' stores. i “Possibly the Treasury and Reserve Bank officials underestimated the amount of ‘collecting’ of coins of the existing currency that would go on, ahd so much in advance, before the change to decimal currency,” he said.