Israel’s mounting inflation has made the smallest unit of currency, the prutah, of so little use that a bill has been presented today to the Knesset to establish a new basic unit. The bill divides the Israel pound into 100 units, each of which will be called an “agorrah.” The prutah represents one one-thousandth of an Israel pound.
The Israeli Treasury decided to abolish the prutah on recommendation of the State Bank that a coin representing the thousandth part of an Israeli pound no longer had any practical value and was not a negotiable currency.
The Israel pound was originally pegged to sterling and had a value of $3. 60 and the prutah was a useful coin. But with the Israeli pound at 60 cents, even a street beggar spurns the coin. The new coin, the “agorrah, ” will have a value of six-tenths of a cent. It is named after the earliest reported small coin in Jewish history. References to it are found in the First Book of Samuel.
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