Demonetized currencies cannot be re-circulated – Dr. Maxwell Opoku-Afari

The 1st Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Maxwell Opoku-Afari, has stated that currencies that have been taken out of the banking system cannot be brought back into circulation.

Addressing the Public Accounts Committee, assigned to scrutinize the Accountant General’s reports for 2015, he stated that the BoG has a policy to that effect.

“We have what we call the clean note policy that determines which currencies after going through the processing system comes back into circulation and which currencies do not meet the fit and proper test to come back, once we set the clean note policy. And this is determined by the power of the security features on the currency. So, once that is detected and set aside, they are shredded and destroyed. So there is no way for those currencies to come back into circulation”, he said.

He added that the demonetized currencies are destroyed overtime after being kept under security.

“There is no way for that to come because once you bring that part into the system, it has to go through the processing mechanism to be released. And if it goes through the processing mechanism, as long as we have the clean note policy threshold set, it will not pass to be circulated again”, he assured the committee.