New currency notes for Lunar New Year: Why must there be a shortage every time?

Not everyone is as lucky as I was in being able to obtain new currency notes for the Lunar New Year.

One friend who thought she would be able to get her all new notes from Citibank without too much of a problem as she was a privileged customer, was surprised when she discovered that some of those delivered to her were in fact old ones.

The reason given to her by the bank was that there was a shortage of certain notes and that demand had exceeded supply.

Which of course left my friend very exasperated because she felt that it was something that should not happening almost every year at this time.

"Why can't the Board of Commissioners of Currency print more new notes for the New Year when it knows that there is always going to be a demand," she said.

"After all, it is a good family tradition that we would want to uphold and the government should play its part to make sure that there is sufficient supply of those notes every year."

I concur fully with her sentiment. Giving ang pows is a fine Chinese tradition that helps to promote family bonding. Unlike the risky fire crackers that were banned many years ago, surely this family value is one that the government would want our children to imbibe and not see it go up in smoke.