The US Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and plans to stop producing the coin when those run out, a Treasury Department official confirmed on Thursday.

This move comes as the cost of making pennies has increased markedly, by upward of 20 percent in 2024, according to the Treasury.

In February, US President Donald Trump announced that he had ordered his administration to cease production of the 1-cent coin.

“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump wrote at that time in a post on his Truth Social site. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”

There are about 114 billion pennies currently in circulation in the United States - that's US$1.14 billion - but they are greatly underutilised, the Treasury says. The penny was one of the first coins made by the US Mint after its establishment in 1792.

The nation's treasury secretary has the authority to mint and issue coins “in amounts the secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States.”

Advocates for ditching the penny cite its high production cost - almost 4 cents per penny now, according to the US Mint - and limited utility. Fans of the penny cite its usefulness in charity drives and relative bargain in production costs compared with the nickel, which costs almost 14 cents to mint.

Pennies are the most popular coin made by the US Mint, which reported making 3.2 billion of them last year. That’s more than half of all the new coins it made last year.

Congress, which dictates currency specifications such as the size and metal content of coins, could make Trump’s order permanent through law. But past congressional efforts to ditch the penny have failed. (AP)