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Calgary stores prepare for end of penny

Merchants in Calgary are getting ready for a change in the way they do business when the Royal Canadian Mint stops distributing the penny on Monday.

Store clerks will start rounding out cash sales to the nearest five cent increment.

Rochdi Sarout, who owns an independent grocery store on International Avenue S.E. in Calgary, worries the switch could end up costing him money.

"If you calculate in a day how many pennies you're going to give away and then times that by how many days in the year, it's going to be quite a nice chunk of change that you're going to be sacrificing," said Sarout.

Jorge Giacalone works for an independent Latino grocery story in southeast Calgary.

"I'm from Argentina. When I was younger, they used to take money out every five, six years. They used to take it out of circulation because it wasn't worth anything. So they used to print bills with higher denomination. Once that starts happening, that's inflation."

Prices that end 1, 2, 6 or 7 cents will be rounded down, while prices ending in 3, 4, 8 or 9 cents will be rounded up.

People in Calgary can donate their pennies to the Heart and Stroke Foundation through CBC Calgary's Penny Love drive.