BSP tells banks to turn over old bank notes

CEBU CITY, Philippines—The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has reminded the country’s bank to replace Philippine bills of the New Design Series (NDS) with the New Generation Currency (NGC), in line with its program to reduce the circulation of the old currency.

BSP held a briefing here last Monday on its ongoing “demonetization program,” a process of removing the monetary value of the NDS, or the old banknotes.

According to Iluminada Sicat, the managing director of the BSP’s currency management subsector, there are still 542 million pieces of the old bank notes in circulation, amounting to P112 billion. This is 20 percent of the total value of money currently in circulation.

“The BSP is only releasing the NGS. We ask these banks to replace their NDS with NGC so that they will no longer issue NDS,” she said.

Sicat said there are 19 months left, or a window of one year and seven months window, for the banks and the members of the public to have their old bank notes exchanged with new ones.

The public may continue to use the old bank notes up to Dec. 31, 2015, only. After that date, they will no longer be accepted for payment transactions.

Sicat said the public will be given until Dec. 31, 2016, to exchange the old bank notes at full face value without charge at any authorized universal and commercial banks, thrift banks and rural as well as cooperative banks.

The old notes may also be exchanged at the BSP and its regional offices.

By January 2017, the old bank notes will no longer have any value.

Sicat said the move to demonetize old bank notes is in line with the practice of other central banks in the world, which change their currency design every 10 years.

The NDS, which was launched in 1985, has been in circulation for 30 years now.–Carmel Loise Matus, Inquirer Visayas