The National Bank of Ukraine has clarified the costs of renaming the Ukrainian banknote. This is stated in the NBU’s response to a request from Kommersant Ukrainsky
“The costs associated with replacing the name ‘kopiyka’ with ‘shag’ and producing 50 shag coins, if the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopts the relevant legislative changes, will be within the operating expenses of the National Bank in accordance with the planned production volumes for 2025,” the bank said,
– the bank said in its response.
Thus, the NBU actually replied that no additional funds are foreseen for the renaming, apparently implying that minting a new coin with a new look and name costs the same amount of money.
“The minting of the change coins, including the adjustment of the design to change the inscription “kopiyka” to “shag”, will be carried out by the staff of the NBU Banknote Mint,”
– they added.
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At the same time, it is well known that the real value of the Ukrainian currency today hardly ever involves payments in such small amounts that would require change coins – current kopiykas or future shahs. The classic example of a box of matches as the cheapest commodity in the country shows that it usually costs two hryvnias at retail. So neither kopiykas nor shahs are practically needed anymore, and their minting should be reduced to insignificant volumes, if not to zero.
Meanwhile, the National Bank is still going to mint 20 million coins with a face value of 50 kopiykas/shahs next year, but they refuse to tell Ukrainian citizens how much it will cost:
“At the same time, we would like to add that these costing items for the production of banknotes and information on the costs of making banknotes and coins are classified as proprietary information.”
Read more about the history of the steps in the material