No one but marketing people sees a point in them.
The one and two lipa coins have become too expensive to produce and have actually not been produced in the past six years. Lipa is falling into oblivion, and the citizens have almost forgotten what it looked like because they have not been using it very often, reports Index.hr on May 24, 2016.
The Croatian National Bank (HNB) points out there are still enough coins of one or two lipa in circulation. However, banks do not have them and retailers do not use them. HNB is therefore not dismissing the possibility for the prices ending in 49, 59 or 99 lipa to be abolished.
Although most of the items in the stores end with 99 lipa, that one lipa is rarely given to the paying customer and customers do not even wait for it. An economic expert has made a calculation which shows how much this costs the state. For instance, if the three million consumers give up about 20 kuna a year by not waiting to get their change of one lipa, and when the 25 percent VAT is subtracted, it turns out that the state budget loses 75 million kuna. “This is the black market and these are huge sums”, the Consumer Association said.
In the words of Mirko Palić from the Faculty of Economics, all aspects should be taken into account. He added that one and two lipa coins could be abolished with time, possibly in several years. “Take the United States for example. In the past 25 years, they were trying to abolish the 25 cents coin. The Netherlands has saved 36 million euros per year after the abolition of the coins of the least value”, he explained.
It would be difficult to calculate all the benefits or shortcomings. However, it is clear that in this case the cost of production of one coin is 7.7 times bigger than the coin value, but the fact is that they are slowly being put out of use. “Meanwhile, the price rounding should be seen in the context of whether they will be rounded to the higher number or to 95 lipa”, he said.
