I recently read commentaries by some of Egypt’s leading economists calling for the cancellation of the one piaster, remember it?
We used to be able to buy things with it at some point; a few years ago you could even buy a loaf of bread for one piaster at a time when the purchasing power of the piaster was strong. The single piaster was made up of ten milliemes, two of which were known as a nikla with an equally strong purchasing power. Half a piaster was called a taareefa and a I still remember that at the beginning of the 1960s a bottle of soda pop cost three taareefas and so was the price of an egg, and a kilo of meat cost a few piasters. In the 1970s when that went up to one pound protests broke out on the streets and people addressed then Speaker of Parliament Sayed Marei (President Sadat’s in-law) saying “Sayed Beih, Sayed Beih, a kilo of meat is for one geneih [pound].
All other foodstuffs, however, like cheese, fuul or olives roamed freely within the arena of the taareefa, the nikla and the millieme.yes, the millieme, because in fact the piaster derived its strength from the millieme. The coin itself bore the words 10 milliemes not one piaster. But where has that piaster gone today?
Some readers sent me letters saying they miss the one piaster coin which has disappeared completely from the market. So I asked a senior official at the Finance Ministry about it and he told me that the coin is available but that the ministry no longer mints any more of it because it has lost its value.
“Why doesn’t the ministry cancel it altogether as it did the millieme and the nikla? I asked.
“This can’t be done without a law issued by the People’s Assembly then approved by the President, he said. “Until this happens, the huge amount of coins we have today falls under the government’s responsibility and we cannot get rid of it in any way.
The one piaster coin has regressed in shame in the face of the rest of our currency which we spend in no time. The piaster only exists in old sayings like ‘the white piaster will help you on a black day’ even though the piaster is no longer white now that it’s all rusty because we no longer use it, nor can it be of any use on any day, be that day black, blue or purple.
The piaster is not the only piece of money that has lost its value. What of the pound itself?
After World War II one Egyptian pound was worth one gold coin but now a single gold pound costs LE 1242 which means that the value of the pound is now worth 0.8 percent of the old millieme.
“As usual the people’s decision has superseded that of the government, I told the official. “People have stopped using the piaster coin in their commercial dealings the same way they stopped using the millieme and the nikla. Soon enough they will stop using the one pound note if the government continues to degrade it in this way and people will start calling for canceling it because it will no longer have any value now that it has been replaced with the five,10, 20, 50, 100 and 200 pound notes, not to mention the 500 pound note that will hit the market very soon. When this happens, the one pound note too will become the responsibility of the Finance Ministry just like the piaster, millieme and nikla coins before it. God be with us then.
Mohamed Salmawyis President of the Arab Writer’s Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
