Kathmandu, Feb. 27: The Mint Division under the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has now been capable to mint Asharfis (gold and silver coins), souvenir coins and commemorative coins commercially.
Minting of gold coins (asharfi) and commemorative coins had been hampered for almost two and a half years in lack of office space of the division. Its previous office located at Sundhara was demolished for the reconstruction of the Dharahara tower.

"With hard efforts of the employees and management in maintenance of the machines by shifting the office, we now have reached the stage of resuming minting asharfis and commemorative coins commercially,'' Binod Raj Acharya, director of the division, said.

The Mint Division has been shifted to a building of the Nepal Aushadhi Limited, Babarmahal from Sundhara. Now the division has started a process to recruit skilled manpower to mint the coins, according to Acharya.

"The NRB has begun the process to recruit skilled retired workers from the Mint Division on contract basis to revive the minting works, as skilled and experienced workers are needed for minting the coins,” he said.
The NRB has also planned to recruit permanent employees to run the Mint Division smoothly.

“Our plan is to recruit the skilled retired manpower on a contract basis for a few years and transfer their knowledge and skills to the new employees as there are only six skilled workers in the division. We will recruit at least one dozen retired workers immediately,” he said.

The commercial production of coins is expected to begin within two months, he said, adding that they have a plan to issue medallion, gold and silver coins and commemorative coins by mid-April 2022.
"We can start minting coins commercially within 10 days of hiring the skilled workers," he said.
The division completed the trial production of coins before the Tihar festival last year.

95% physical restructuring completed
"Work on the physical infrastructure for setting up machines and their maintenance is going on in full swing," Acharya told The Rising Nepal.
He said that 95 per cent of the maintenance of machines and equipment has been completed.

"We have repaired all the old machines and got them running. We have not added anything new except a motor to operate the old machine," he added.
Acharya said that they have started minting the gold coins from their temporary office in Babarmahal in order to preserve the traditional skills of coin minting. "With the technical support of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Kathmandu University, we were able to mint asharfis by maintaining the machines affected by the earthquake and rust as they had been in disuse for a long time,” he said.

All the machines were brought during the reign of Rana Prime Minister Juddha Shumsher for the then Minting Department. Plan to resume issue of circulated coins
In 1983, the Department came under Nepal Rastra Bank as a division and started minting coins of small denominations of one, five, 10, 25 and 50 paisa and Rs. 1 to Rs. 5.
The minting of coins had stopped in 2003 (2060 BS) and the NRB started importing coins from abroad citing that the cost of production had increased in Nepal.

Recently, NRB had called a global tender to supply 100 million pieces of coins Rs. 2 denomination and 300 million pieces of Rs. 1 denomination. Out of them, around 50 million pieces of coins of Rs. 2 and 50 million pieces of coins of Rs. 1 had arrived so far. The circulated coin denomination of Rs. 1 is brought from Poland and Rs. 2 from England.

Acharya viewed that the country should mint the circulated coins inside the country even though the costs of minting at home are higher to preserve our cultural tradition and pride of the country. Besides, it will support creating jobs inside the country, he added.

He said, “After the construction of a new building of the division at Sanothimi in Bhaktapur completes, we have a plan to mint coins regularly. The management of NRB has also been positive in this regard,” he said.

According to Acharya, minting can now be done as per the demand of the government and private sector on special days, events, festivals or occasions.