With a little over a month and a half left to E-day, households, classrooms and businesses are to begin receiving information on Malta’s new currency as the Central Bank of Malta kicks off the main leg of its euro awareness-raising campaign.
A range of visual materials developed by the Central Bank of Malta in conjunction with the European Central Bank, as well as retail and public starter kits, are to be made available in the near future so businesses and the public can begin familiarising themselves with Malta’s new currency.
The dehoarding campaign, aimed at bringing stashed Maltese currency out of the woodwork before euro adoption, is also progressing.
Central Bank governor Michael Bonello yesterday cited recent figures showing that Lm115 million in Malta’s soon-to-be legacy currency had been returned to the Central Bank between September 2006 and last September. Over Lm372 million, however, remains in circulation.
The process is a gradual one and Mr Bonello was confident that the volumes of Maltese liri making their way back to the Central Bank would increase incrementally as E-day draws nearer.
Information leaflets and conversion cards are at the moment being posted to all households in Malta and Gozo, while posters with representations of euro coins and notes, and others displaying euro banknote security features, have also been distributed to every classroom in Malta, local councils, banks, day centres and government departments.
National Euro Changeover Committee ‘euro helpers’ have also been distributing leaflets and booklets outlining the new currency and its security features have also been distributed to shopkeepers across the country, while another book and accompanying CD aimed at trainers has also been published for use during training sessions on the euro’s security features.
For the visually impaired, a talking card has been developed to explain the main characteristics of the euro notes and coins. The particular means of addressing accessibility to information, akin to sound greeting cards with a small embedded sound chip, is a first in Europe that other countries joining the EU’s single currency in future will also adopt.
The central bank will also be broadcasting a series of television and printed media advertisements detailing the new currency and its security features. The campaign will run until March, by which time it would have moved from familiarising people with the euro currency itself, its security features, means of notation, to the actual exchange of Maltese liri for euros.
The bank will also be issuing euro coin starter kits for the retail community and the public.
The retail starter kits, which are to become available on 1 December from retail banks, will contain EUR131 (Lm56.24) in euro coins and will allow retailers to begin giving change in euros as from 1 January.
Mini kits for the public, meanwhile, will become available on 10 December and will hold EUR11.65 (Lm5) in euro coinage.
While retailers and the public will be able to familiarise themselves with Malta’s euro coins, the coins will not be legal tender until 1 January and their use in transactions before the date will be illegal.
Moreover, an official set of the Maltese euro coins for collectors will also be made available for sale on 1 December for Lm15.03 (EUR35). The bank will also issue its last commemorative series of Maltese lira coinage in the near future, after which the bank’s annual commemorative issues will be in euros.