President João Lourenço of Angola has officially opened the National Bank of Angola’s new high-tech cash centre – Casa do Kwanza – in the capital, Luanda for the storage, processing and distribution of the country’s currency, the kwanza. The cash centre has been four years in the making, at a budgeted cost of approximately Kz 33 billion ($36 million).

Inflation is a much-talked about topic, particularly as currencies battle against environmental disasters, energy crises, conflicts, and the aftereffects of the COVID pandemic, to name a few culprits. Therefore, it seemed timely that the topic of high inflation and coins was covered at last year’s Coin Conference, held in Lisbon, Portugal.

Despite the rapid rise in digital payment systems and methods, cash still remains as an important and necessary payment option. This is seen clearly in the latest payment surveys conducted by both the ECB and Monnaie de Paris.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has released its circulation figures for 2023-24, documenting in its annual report that both the total value and volume of coins in circulation increased during the year – by 10.4% and 3.5% respectively.

Many central banks continue to issue their annual reports for 2023 as the year progresses – including the Central Bank of Ireland (Banc Ceannais na hÉireann) and Reserve Bank of India.

The tagline for the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) Annual Report 2023 – ‘Anchoring Stability and Sustainable Growth amid Challenging Times’ – takes note of the inflationary challenges and other pressures that the Philippines faced last year.

The central bank of Estonia, Eesti Pank, ended last year with an announcement that its Omniva coin collection campaign would continue into 2024. Although the programme had only been running for three months (as of December 2023), it had already collected around 3.3 million coins – 65% of which were 1 and 2 cent coins.

In this article, we summarise the information from central bank reports on circulating and commemorative coins and numismatic programmes.

We continue our periodic series of articles on the latest annual reports from central banks and the information they provide on cash, along with circulating and commemorative coins.

At the Coin Conference in Amsterdam last October, Beatriz Guia of Banco de España provided an overview of Spain’s coin circulation and management. This article is based on that presentation, with an update following the publication of the BdE’s annual report this summer.