Chewing gum replaces missing coins as Turkmenistan faces chronic money shortage

Chewing gum replaces missing coins as Turkmenistan faces chronic money shortage

A supermarket checkout in Turkmenistan often ends with a specific calculation: 137 manats and 21 tenge. But the customer rarely has tenge. Instead of coins, they receive two manats and a piece of Yunus chewing gum as change. The shortage of tenge – the fractional unit of the Turkmen manat – has become a permanent fixture of the everyday economy. While residents occasionally face acute cash shortages at ATMs, tenge have effectively vanished from …