Update on the Global Demand for Banknotes

Currency News™ began to publish global annual updates on banknote demand in 2017. The first years provided no major surprises. Normally, a few currencies (less than 10%) had a negative annual growth rate by value of banknotes in circulation and similarly a few currencies (again less than 10%) had a high annual growth rate of more than 25%. The growth rates of the great majority of currencies varied between 0% and 15%, and their distributions were nicely shaped, tending towards a normal distribution. All this changed in 2020, and since then the situation hasn’t stabilised.

In 2020 more than 75% of the currencies had a double-digit growth rate, which exceeded 25% in the case of more than 22% of the currencies. It was evident that this exceptional development related to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic would be later counteracted. That didn’t happen in 2021.