Revenue-neutral process

“Killing the lowly [one- and two-cent coins] was a painless, revenue-neutral adventure for New Zealand, according to a finance official from that country,” Bryn Weese writes for the Toronto Sun as Canada looks at terminating its own smaller coin denominations. “The New Zealanders cut out their one- and two-cent coins in 1989. It was such a popular move they scrapped the nickel, too, in 26. Alan Boaden, who heads New Zealand’s Reserve Bank currency department, spoke at the Senate’s national finance committee Wednesday by videoconference. “The one- and two-cent coins had lost their value and no longer had any effective purchasing power,” Boaden said, adding that, as in Canada, the coins had become more costly to produce than they were worth.