The end of one sen

How many times have we been to either a fast food outlet or a mall and see ourselves being shortchanged over the odd one or two sen? It happens regularly although some multinational supermarkets and utility giants have now started to absorb the minor loss on themselves.

And how often do we see the one sen copper coin left unpicked in the streets? Quite often I think.

I think we Malaysians have given up looking at the one sen coin as a legal denomination many years ago. We don’t have the same respect for this single sen like they do in the US or the UK.

We automatically have started rounding up things to the nearest 5 sen or 10 sen whenever the odd figure appears in our bills.

So it was not a great surprise for me to read that the government wants to pension off the one sen coin by next April.

And to make things easier, a new round-up mechanism would be introduced for all over-the-counter transactions where all payment totals will either be rounded up or down to the nearest five sen.

The government has given various reasons for doing away with the one sen coin (see chart, courtesy of the star).

However I am worried that despite the cost, wastage and unusefulness factors, are we admitting that we are being affected by the rising inflation where we find no value for the one sen?

So what’s next? Do we do the same with five sen? And the 10 sen? Finally leaving the RM1 as the lowest denomination of our currency?

That’s what I am worried off - going back to the banana money days!