Central Banks and Cash Round-Up

This month’s coverage of cash information in central bank annual reports contains news from the central banks of Rwanda and Uganda.

National Bank of Rwanda (NBR)

Cash in circulation: in the year, the NBR says it successfully fulfilled its primary role of issuing legal tender in suitable denominations. The value of CIC grew by 6.36%, increasing from RWF 352.57 billion in 2021/22 to RWF 375 billion in 2022/23.

Trends in cash cycle management: there was a 19% increase in total cash deposits of banknotes, reaching RWF 588.51 billion, compared to RWF 494.58 billion the previous year.

Similarly, total cash withdrawals increased by 2.1% to RWF 532.69 billion from RWF 521.96 billion.

The Cash Automation Centre Project, aimed at enhancing cash management processes, was successfully concluded. The project involved automating the NBR cash vault management system, currency storage, and operations.

Bank of Uganda (BOU)

Cash in circulation: this grew by 487 billion Ugandan shillings, or UGX (7.1%) from UGX 6.8 trillion in FY 2021/22 to UGX 7.3 trillion in 2022/23. The net value of banknotes in circulation increased by UGX 477 billion from UGX 6.6 trillion in June 2022 to UGX 7.1 trillion in June 2023, while that of coins increased by UGX 9.9 billion to UGX 216 billion.

During FY 2022/23, the need for cash increased by 14%, from an outflow of UGX 10.2 trillion in FY 2021/22 to UGX 11.6 trillion. Deposits by commercial banks on the other hand, grew by 19% from UGX 9.4 trillion to UGX 11.1 trillion.

During 2022/23, the BOU’s Currency Department processed used banknotes to the value of UGX 10.3 trillion, up by 8% over the previous year. This resulted in a 19% expansion in reissued currency returned in the period. Out of the UGX 10.3 trillion, 76% was reissued and the rest destroyed.

Currency costs: BOU spent UGX 199.3 billion on currency issuance, up by 15.6% on the previous year. Of this, UGX 190 billion was spent on banknotes (an increase of 16.6%) and UGX 9.4 billion on coins (a decrease of 0.5%).