Somali government will print new currency notes to replace the ones currently in use, the The Finance minister Abdirahman Dualeh Beileh made the announcement in his office in Mogadishu on Saturday, where he displayed two samples of the new notes. The specimens were of the 5,000 and 10,000 shillings denominations.
“My government is determined to print new currencies of the Somali Shillings that include 5,000 and 10,000 denominations,” said Dr Beileh.
The new currencies will replace the old ones that were largely out of circulation. The most readily available of the current notes are of the 1,000 shillings denominations that have been in use for the past two decades.
Successive Somali governments have tried to introduce new currencies, but were always hindered by the debt relief conditions, imposed by the international financial institutions.
Dr Beileh did not specify any date for the start of the currency printing. The Horn of Africa state has been unstable since the outbreak of the civil war and the subsequent collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991.
