The Bank of Russia plans to kick off an experiment to collect coins from the population. The coins will be collected with the help of special machines, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta wrote.
There will be no commission for collecting coins (if there is any commission, it will be minimal). The pilot launch of the project will take place in 2022 in one of the regions with a low percentage of coin return from circulation. Due to the lack of the necessary equipment for the implementation of the experiment, the Central Bank will attract a partner that will provide all the necessary technology. In the future, it is planned to expand the use of coin collecting machines.
In 2020, the Bank of Russia issued more than 1.3 billion coins - nine for each citizen of the country, the newspaper wrote. This cost the regulator 3.8 billion rubles.
During the pandemic, the percentage of coins that returned to the box office dropped to 46 (vs. 63 percent in 2019). The Central Bank also said that trade companies often refuse to accept coins from the population in order to reduce their counting and collection costs.
In August 2020, it was reported that Russians started paying less in small change. As of the end of 2019, there were 67.8 billion coins in circulation, and already in 2020 their number increased by another 362 million, amounting to 68.2 billion. The Central Bank explained that it had to produce coins every year, because many of them get lost.