Adventures with Money

Many of you may have heard from me at one point or another some of the issues surrounding the change in currency from old manat to new manat here in Turkmenistan. There have been countless times when the things that come out of my mouth just don’t make any sense, or I’ve gotten exceedingly confused on a taxi ride, or when telling people about my Peace Corps income. I’ve decided to write up a few stories and share them with you.
First, you will need some background information to attempt to make sense of the following puzzles. The old manat bills were nearly all 10,000 bills. There were also 500, 1,000 (bills and coins) and 5,000 bills. With the exchange rate 14,215 manat to the dollar you can imagine many purchases were made with large bundles of bills. I was even considered a millionaire once or twice during those first few months in country.
As of January 1 (this year) both sets of currency are legal tender and will be until January 1 of next year when only the new currency will be considered legal tender. Many Turkmen were very worried about this transition because a similar change in currency happened several years ago that left many Turkmen hurting. I don’t know the exact specifics but I understand it had to do with the exchange rate with the dollar. Many people here keep their savings in their homes in US dollars rather than in manats or in banks.
The new manat has been changed so that 5,000 old manat = 1 new manat. They have also introduced a cent type unit called the teňňe (pronounced teng-ay) with 1 teňňe being 50 old manat (yes 50, not 500, or 5,000). The coins come in 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50 (the 1 and 5 are utterly useless) and the new bills come in 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and supposedly 500 (I’ve never seen these). While having a large range of bills is helpful getting too many 50’s and 100’s at the bank can be not helpful when I’m buying a kilo of tomatoes at 15,000 (old manat) a kilo. The new exchange rate is that 2.843 new manat = 1 dollar. So, please enjoy some of the following stories all about the strange changeover of bills.
A fellow volunteer (Jessie) and I were debating if we both ended up paying the same price for a taxi ride and I said, “I gave him a 5, you gave me 10 and he gave me 2 so you would owe me another 2.5 if we’re both even”. Let’s review that again, “I gave him a 5 (new manat = 25,000 old manat), you gave me 10 (10,000 old manat), and he gave me 2 (new manat = 10,000 old) so you would owe me another 2.5 (new manat = 12,500 old) if we’re both even”.
While arranging with a taxi driver the price of a potential ride across town (in Ashgabat) he said “10”. This is an EXTREMELY confusing answer! It could mean any one of the following possibilities – none of which would be totally outrageous for a taxi driver to ask a group of foreigners. 1) 10,000 total for everyone involved – a very cheap taxi ride one that I would take. 2) 10,000 per person – this is an expensive taxi ride but depending on the time of day and how desperate or in a hurry might consider. 3) 10 new manat which would be 50,000 old manat and again very expensive. I wouldn’t take this ride no matter what, but that won’t stop a greedy taxi driver from asking for that much.
The first montly living stipend we got in 2009 was in new manat. We picked it up at the bank and it was about 530 new manat (a huge difference from our 2.5 million stipend before). Because it was so new the bank teller gave each of us (myself and two other volunteers near me all go to the same bank) 5 – 100 bills, 1 – 20, 1 – 10 and a few 1’s. I took a look at it and asked if I could have different bills, but they didn’t have any. In order to be able to buy anything – anywhere I had to ask my family if they could break one of my 100’s. (Again many Turkmen have large amounts of money hidden under their carpets in their homes.)