A decade after the euro was introduced in Lithuania, the country’s population has not yet exchanged around 0.4 billion litas, which amounts to around 116 million euros.
According to the Bank of Lithuania, it's unlikely that all of the missing litas will be exchanged, as some of the currency has been lost, taken abroad, or is being kept as souvenirs.
Edita Lisinskaitė, chief specialist of the Policy, Issuance and Control Department of the Bank of Lithuania, people often bring litas back after finding them in unexpected places, for example, when dealing with inherited property.
She said that people have previously found litas hidden among clothes, in books, gift envelopes, in an old handbag, under the floorboards, in walls, or buried in the yard.
“Money was also found in a tractor, in a farmhouse that people bought, and in a tree when it was cut down,” Lisinskaitė told BNS.
The Central Bank changed litas to euro around 15 times per day, or some 3,500 times between January and November last year. On average, people exchanged 14,000 litas, or 4,100 euros.
According to Lisinskaitė, the highest amount exchanged in one transaction last year was 30,000 litas, or 8,700 euros.
The value of banknotes still in circulation is around 0.3 billion litas, and the value of coins is 0.1 billion litas, or 86.9 million and 29 million euros, respectively.
In the decade since the euro was adopted, the population has exchanged 5.4 billion litas, or 1.56 billion euros, at the central bank’s cash desks.
Around 11.3 billion litas were in circulation a year before the euro adoption.
Litas are exchanged into euros free of charge and for an unlimited period at the Bank of Lithuania cash desks in Vilnius and Kaunas.
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