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In the Philippines, a bill has been introduced which will make
it illegal to hoard coins with a penalty of jail time and a fine. Hoarding is defined as a person possessing legal tender coins “beyond
the requirements of his regular business.”
"Legal Tender" not legal if
you have more than your 'fair share',
and are depriving others from 'sharing in the common
good.'
In the Philippines, a bill has been introduced which will make
it illegal to hoard coins with a penalty
of jail time and a fine. Hoarding
is defined as a person possessing legal tender coins “beyond
the requirements of his regular business.”
By Jonathan de Santos | Yahoo! Southeast
Asia Newsroom – Fri, May 11, 2012
Coin collectors beware.
Senator Manuel Lapid
has filed a bill to penalize
the hoarding of coins to avoid
coin shortage.
Citing figures from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), Lapid said there
should be around 17.34 billion coins--worth
around P18.94 billion--in circulation. He said that would
mean around 184 coins per
Filipino.
"To enterprising crooks,
this volume of coins in circulation is a goldmine. Recent valuation of the worth of the country's coinage suggests four of the
coins are worth more than
their face value if melted,"
he said in his explanatory note.
Lapid warned that melting down coins "along with the common practice of keeping
coins in piggy banks,
commercial undertakings such
as the Automatic Tubig
Machines which use coins for operation,
video games machines and illegal numbers games, may threaten
the sound circulation of coins in the
country."
His bill defines coin hoarding as possessing coins of
legal tender "beyond
the requirements of his regular business as may be determined by the BSP."
Although coin collecting is allowed, the BSP can demand that
people turn in all their
coins within a month of declaring a coin shortage.
Under the Lapid bill, "failure
to make the surrender within the required period shall constitute coin hoarding."
The bill proposes a penalty of one year in prison
and a fine of P100,000 "for every one thousand pieces of coins hoarded or a fraction thereof."
If passed into law, the bill allows the government to confiscate the
coins for its own use.
The bill also proposes to allow
BSP, in case of a coin shortage, to require all business transactions to be
done in coins. "Any
transaction to the contrary shall
be considered coin hoarding," his bill reads.
"Though the day may be far when
we may legally accept being given candies for change instead of coins, such a problem may not be remote as indicated by reports in other jurisdictions. It is thus imperative that preventive measures be put in place,"
Lapid said.
BSP has had a coin recirculation program since
2005 to address perceived
coin shortages in some
areas in the Philippines and to save money because the “intrinsic
value of the coin is greater
than its nominal value especially for the lower-denominated
coins.”
“Coins are kept inside
bank vaults, in piggy banks, inside drawers, used as washers, or thrown away as inconvenience,” the BSP said.
Source
Read more: http://chasvoice.blogspot.com/2012/05/coin-hoarding-soon-crime-maybe-so-in.html#ixzz1v34iLjCu
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