Net Number of coins of cents denominations issued into circulation
each year by CBSL is published in the Annual Report issued in April of
the next year.
Listed in Thousands of coins.
| Year | 01 Cent | 02 Cent | 05 Cent | 10 Cent | 25 Cent | 50 Cent | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last | 1994 | 1978 | 1991 | 1991 | 2009 | 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MinR | 100 | 50 | 20 | 10 | 4 | 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2009 | 0 | 50 | 40 | 30 | 1660 | 2714
| 2010 | 0 | 0 | -80 | -80 | -2536 | 2880
| 2011 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -30 | 588 | -256
| 2012 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -2140 | -254
| 2013 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | -166 | 840
| 2014 | 0 | 50 | 40 | 30 | -32 | -468
| 2015 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -386
| 2016 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 112 | 480
| 2017 | 0 | 200 | 220 | 210 | 1812 | -42
| 2018 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 30 | 28 | -686
| 2019 | 0 | 100 | 120 | 40 | 804 | -198
| 2020 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 0 | -4 | -2
| | ||||||
The CBSL Annual Reports in Part 2 circulation of coins to nearest Rs1000.
MinR is the minimum detectable change in number of thousand coins
issued into circulation using this data.
The table illustrates the fact that 25 cents stopped circulating in 2010 and 50 cents in 2011.
The mysterious issue of 2 cent, 5 cents and 10 cents coins about 30,000 in 2009 and 2014, and about 200,000 in 2017 must be from Numismatic dealer demands. None of these denominations have circulated for over 20 years.
The issue of 1.8 Million 25 cent coins in 2017 is also mysterious particularly because of the on going saga of the 2009 issue.
I find bags of 1000 uncirculated coins for Sale on eBay from Singapore each for US$300+$50 S&H See 1978 2 Cents 1978 5 Cents 1978 10 Cents When I inquired from seller he said that 1 Cent was also available for the same price.
US$0.30 (Rs50) is a reasonable numismatic wholesale price for a coin as they retail for over US$0.60 (Rs100) in Uncirculated condition.
So 600 Thousand coins put into circulation for Rs29,000 and sold for US$179400 or about Rs 28 Million is not a bad profit for seller and anyone who facilitated the deal.
And I suspect the stocks kept for CBSL archive are no more.
The sale of Bags of Coins directly into the Numismatic Market is not new. I was told by the the Dammika Goonaratne Deputy Superintendent of Currency around 2005 that all issue of low denominations 1 cent, 2 cent, 5 cent and 10 cent coins which were last minted in 1994, 1978, 1991 and 1991 respectively have been stopped, keeping some stock for archival needs. He even made provision to use some of the excess stock even dating back to King George VI issues from 1951 to be packed into sets and sold to collectors from the CBSL Museum, then at Center for Banking Studies in Rajagiriya.
Few years later when I was at Cash counter in CBSL, I noticed that a Foreign dealer was taking delivery of bags of cent coins and I inquired how, and this issue was stopped. I probably made some enemies that day.
When I wanted to get an uncirculated bag each of 2009 25 cents and 50 cents coins, CBSL refused to issue them, but they were on sale on eBay and Aliexpress for 100 times face value.
On 2018 May 2 E-mail the Deputy Superintendent of the Currency Department on this issue and sent a link to this page. I was informally told these coins were used for a CBSL project.
When the set of 25 Rs 10 District coins were issued in 2013, the 2 Million coins Minted of each would have easily satisfied the collector need. However lot of the coins were never issued into circulation creating an artificial scarcity. They were offered in numismatic market at a premium of 5 times face value. Same is now done for most of the circulating commemorative issues which are very rarely found in circulation, defeating the whole purpose of an commemorative coin.
When new smaller 2017 Sri Lanka coins were issued in 2018, I was told by CBSL that the Thickness, rather than standard mean Weight was specified to the Mint. Weight can easily be checked in bulk. I found that the thickness was 5-10% lighter than published in a small random sample. Since 1959 all Central Bank circulating coins were minted at the Royal Mint in UK which is beyond reproach. One could wonder, if this was why the coin orders were switched to Kremnica, in Slovakia, partly in 2013 and completely by 2017.