Central Bank of Kenya Governor, Dr Patrick Njoroge has said that only 209.66 million old-generation Sh1, 000 notes were collected up to the September 30 deadline.
Njoroge further noted that the country had Sh217 million pieces in circulation.
Speaking during a press conference at CBK headquarters in Nairobi, Njoroge said that the old notes were being phased out to deal with illicit financial flow.
“Demonetisation is done for a number of reasons. In Kenya, we did it for two reasons: The first one was to deal with illicit financial flows in Kenya and other countries. The second reason was that we needed to deal with counterfeiting of the Kenyan currency; the banknote of choice was Ksh1, 000,” said Njoroge on Wednesday.
The campaign to phase out the old Sh1000 notes began on June 1, during the Madaraka Day celebrations that were held in Narok County.
Addressing why the government settled on a 4-month window, Njoroge noted that that was a balance between a section of Kenyans.
“There are some questions that Kenyans asked throughout the exercise: Some said: ‘was four months enough’? Others said: ‘Was 4 months too much? Maybe we should have done 2 months’. We had to strike a balance between being overly generous for the common mwananchi to allow them a lot of time to exchange the old money,” added Njoroge.