By Saidu Dumbuya
The Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Prof.
Kalfala Kallon yesterday updated the Members of Parliament that the government has
received the first consignment of printed bank notes ordered.
According to the Bank Governor, there is now
sufficient money in the bank and that they will be expecting the other
consignments in February and June this year.
The reasons Governor Kallon advanced for the
recent shortage of bank notes is the hoarding of the currency by private
individuals, adding that the outbreak COVID-19 also contributed to the shortage
as the supply of materials used to print the bank notes reduced dramatically.
According to him, this short-term measures will
ensure that regardless of hoarding, which, he said, cannot go on forever as the
hoarders have limited vault capacities, there will be no cash shortage in the
banks in the foreseeable future.
He said what people fail to understand is that
cash becomes only inflationary when it is in the hands of the non-bank public,
not when it is lodged in the vaults of banks.
He assured that in any case, the people of this
country should be comforted by the fact that they have a Bank Governor who has
reduced inflation from the 17.8 percent he inherited in October 2018 to 10.6
percent in November 2020 and one who has vast knowledge about the effects of
inflation and would never allow a
reversal of the gains he has made over the last two years.
He however confessed that obviously, printing
new notes is not a viable long-term solution to the country’s cash problems.
