We can say, with full confidence, that the country has emerged from ‘D-day’ without inconvenience, incident or trouble. Both the banking system and retail have been preparing for the denomination carefully and for a long time, allowing new money to come into circulation without serious difficulty. Some authorities set up hotlines, but few calls were received.
Over recent days, the few dozen phone calls received by the Ministry of Trade were mostly from legal entities rather than private citizens. The Head of Trade and Services at the Ministry of Trade, Violetta Brezovskaya, tells us, “They wanted to find out whether old cash registers are still suitable and what they need to do to upgrade. We arranged most of the explanatory work in time and were able to predict possible questions.”
Most people now realise that old and new money can be combined in paying for goods at shops, and that cheques can still be written in both formats.
By Alexander Benkovsky
