South African Reserve Bank to unveil new coins in January 2023

After announcing changes to South African coins back in August, the South African Reserve Bank will finally unveil them in January next year.

Media reports indicate that the South African Reserve Bank has gazetted the new designs for the 2023 Fourth Decimal Coin Series of South Africa.

BusinessTech Africa understands that the R5, R2, R1, 50c, 20c, and 10c coins are set to become legal tender from January 01, 2023.

This website has discovered that these new coins were initially revealed in an online meeting on August 31, where the cabinet green-lit the new dimension, design, and compilation of the coins.

The key change in the next series is that the word “South Africa” will be inserted on one side of the coins and printed in all the official languages in the country.

BusinessTech has it that the coins will be minted on a rotational system with the use of all the official languages being printed onto the coin over a certain period.

For the next 10 years, South African languages will be alternated annually and it’s reported that R5 will have three languages, R2, 50c, and 10c – two languages will be used and the R1 coin will have only one language will be used.

However, the gazetted designs have revealed a host of other changes – including changes to some of the animals featured on the coins.

As previously reported by BTA, the South African Reserve Bank was expected to raise interest rates this week, making it the seventh hike since the current cycle began in November 2021.

Maarten Ackerman, the chief economist at Citadel, believes the SARB’s Monetary Policy Committee will ‘gift’ the country another 75 basis point hike, raising the repo rate to 7.00%.

Ackerman believes the SARB will continue to raise interest rates to reflect what is happening in the rest of the world, particularly the actions of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) in the current environment.