Pupils and students collect minted coins, National Bank of Serbia buys them

The second term for the pupils and students of primary and secondary schools in Serbia started today (except in Vojvodina where the second term starts on January 31). Also, the campaign of the National Bank of Serbia "Win by saving" is resumed, within the scope of which the invitation was sent to all pupils and students of the primary and secondary schools to participate in the campaign of collecting minted coins out of circulation, which will be later procured by the National Bank of Serbia.

According to the web site of the National Bank of Serbia, the aim of the campaign is to contribute to the resolving of the constant problem with minted coins. Namely, minted coins that are put into circulation almost never return through payment of daily turnover, and that is why it is necessary to make additional quantity of minted coins all the time, which is very expensive.

- The citizens who did not exchange the money out of circulation for the new money are in loss, as well as the society as a whole, because a great quantity of metal that could be melted and used for the design of new minted coins remains unused in the minted coins people failed to exchange for the new money - NBS explains on its web site.

That problem, according to NBS, is best illustrated by the fact that only 1.5% of total of 477m pieces of minted coins that are out of circulation (of 1, 5, 10 and 50 para) are in the treasures of NBS. Total nominal value of that quantity of minted coins is 235m RSD, and that money contains 1,800 tons of metal (1,320 tons of copper, 370 tons of zinc and 138 tons of nickel). If we take in consideration the prices of these metals on the London Stock Exchange, the value of these coins is 1.6 billion RSD!