A shire in Western Australia's Wheatbelt region is set to inject more than $150,000 into its economy by providing residents with vouchers redeemable at local businesses.
Narrogin Shire president Leigh Ballard said the area's 3,000 or so registered voters should receive their "Narrogin Dollars" next month.
"We're hoping it is going to help our community come out of the COVID lockdown," Mr Ballard said.
"It is set to start in June as there is still a fair bit of planning and getting the actual dollars out.
"We're going to send a letter out to every person on the electoral roll to come and collect their dollars from a location and get their name ticked off like you do when you vote.
"Then they can go and spend it, but it needs to be spent straight away by the end of August, so that the stimulation back into our economy happens straight away."
Pubs, clubs and cafes
Mr Ballard said the money was sourced from projects that were cancelled because of the pandemic.
"There were a few events that the Shire was going to run, which all got stopped because of COVID," he said.
"So those funds were already budgeted for."
At this stage the $50 vouchers will be a one-off — Mr Ballard said that like every other council, the Shire was not sure how the next six months would pan out.
"We have issues with community groups not being able to pay their rent, sporting clubs that are missing out on revenue because sports are not happening," he said.
"So we have to weigh all that up going forward and we'll look at each individual issue as it arises.
"We're trying to foresee a few of those and plan for them.
"The thing we're trying to make sure of is that the cafes that have reduced a lot of their income, the pubs and anyone else who was forced to close through this process, we can hopefully try and support them so that when they do reopen people start using them again and they can stay open."
Bevan Steele, from the Narrogin Chamber of Commerce, said he was extremely happy with the initiative and would be pleased to see other towns around the region adopt something similar.
"This provides an excellent opportunity to stimulate local Narrogin businesses and create flow on stimulation to other business nearby," he said.
