Monrovia – The president of the Liberia Bank for investment and Development (LBDI) John Davies says the government needs to change entirely the current money in circulation to bring about stability in the long-running currency crisis.
Speaking at the Center for the Exchange of Intellectual Opinion (CEIO) the LBDI boss termed the printing of new banknotes as a “competent crisis matter”. He added that many people have lost confidence in the current banknotes.
He said that if the government prints the existing family of banknotes, they will still be enabling the orders of banknotes.
“People will just add up what they already got but when you change they will be forced to bring it – who will want their hundreds of millions to go waste?” he asked rhetorically.
“We hold the view that it is not additional banknotes to increase the existence currency of banknotes that is required to deal with this matter, it is a wholesale change of the existing currency of banknotes. That is a radicle recommendation. A lot of faith in the existing currency of banknotes has been lost,” Mr. Davies said.
LBDI boss added: “It is not John Davies’s opinion. It is just what the market believes because of all the relatives unanswered questions about who has what and where it is.”
According to him, changing the current family of banknotes with a new family of banknotes will leave people with no choice but to bring the money that is outside back to the banks. Like other countries, Davies says the commercial banks play a pivotal role in the changing of money.
“If you are keeping a large volume of banknotes in your house, you either bring it back to the bank or it will be useless to you,” he said.
The change of the banknotes, according to the LBDI boss, will help the country in many ways.
First, he says it will give the monetary policymakers a clear opportunity to know where the money has been all the time that it was not in the bank.
“We will see where it is coming from. It gives our monetary policymakers the opportunity to do what we called national strategy research. The money comes in, they see it, they track it, and they know how to hold it base on how it infuses out,” he said.
“It gives our monetary policymakers the best opportunity to strategically align the infusion of the new basket of currency with the strategy rollout of digital financial services hand in hand.
He says the people who kicked against such an idea do it as regards the cost adding that the country has to collectively plan for it if they want the economy to beep-up.
“It is a continuous distraction for this government and it will be a distraction for any government in the future as we continue to side-step this issue,” he said.