Philippines one peso coins being smuggled to China and Hong Kong

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?...5_april05_2006

On 4 Apr 2006 14:10:06 -0700, "stonej"
wrote:

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?...5_april05_2006

Not a bad deal, at 2¢ each or so. But you'd think China could import
all those scrap pre-euro European coins and not be seen as a great big
dork of a country for stealing some poor little country's peso coins.

You would also think that China has a sufficiently worked out means of
producing tokens that they don't have to steal raw material. Just goes
to show.

Padraic.

la cieurgeourea provoer mal trasfu
ast meiyoer ke 'l andrext ben trasfu.

I think that the Philippines government is going to have a real
problem on thier hands. The face value is just under 2 cents (US) each
for these coins. These coins are 6.1 grams of CuNi (75% copper, 25%
Nickel), which makes the metal value about 4.75 cents each per my
calculations. I'm sure the Philippines have some type of exportation
laws that prohibit this activity, but raw materials at about a 60%
discount over market prices is very attractive to those who do not care
about those type of laws. The Philippines government is losing over
2-1/2 cents, not counting production costs, on every 1 piso coin it
makes and sells at face value to the public. The Philippines government
stands to lose a substansial amount of money replacing the 1 piso coins
lost due to this activity. To stop this the Philippines government
should redesign the 1 piso coins in a size / alloy combination that
makes the metal worth less than the face value, widthdraw all the
existing 1 piso coins circulation (at face value) and then sell them to
the scrap market at the current metal price. By doing this they
possibly make enough to pay for issuing the new coins. We would have
the same problem in the US if we still made cents out of copper instead
of the copper plated zinc which they are now.

Sean Moffatt
Operations Manager
Hoffman MInt