Thaindian News

Washington, Aug. 11 (ANI): The American citizen’s preference for dollar bills has left coins worth more than 1.1 billion dollars languishing in storage.

According to The Telegraph, the reluctance to use coins could result in a stack seven times higher than the International Space Station.

Alamy Inventory is expected to grow to two billion dollars in the next six years, despite calculations that the US Federal Reserve, which is running out of storage space, has enough dollar coins to last another decade.

Only an act of Congress can slow the stockpile, either by phasing out the dollar bill or by stopping the minting, the New York Times reports. The coin build-up began three years ago, when a Congressional law went into effect requiring the US mint to issue four new presidential coins every year, even if most of the previous year’s coins were still in government vaults.

Since the start of the various dollar coin programmes, the US mint has issued almost four billion coins. Of these, the mint has distributed 1.7 billion dollar coins since 2007, while it has spent about 30 million dollars in that period promoting the coins.

Replacing the dollar bill with the coin is an attractive option, however, as it could save between 500 million to 700 million dollars a year in printing and paper costs, as coins last significantly longer than their paper equivalents.

Distributing the coins into wider circulation is proving a problem. Consumers are reluctant to carry them as they fear retailers will not take them, while retailers do not stock them as they believe consumers will not use them. (ANI)