Bangko Sentral introduces new peso bills

THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas-Cagayan de Oro branch formally launched Thursday the currency that carries a completely new appearance.

Cecilia C. Cellona-Hortal, BSP's senior currency specialist for cash department, said these bills are now circulated nationwide and the public can now trade their previous currencies with the BSP and local banks.

The new bills, which previously earned ridicule for some misspelled details, took the BSP three long years to take out.

Hortal said the new bills have asymmetric serial number, which means that the size of the figures are ascending from the first number to the last.

She said these bank notes technically now have watermark that could never be erased, unlike the previous bills that can be deleted when wet.

The watermark is a shadow image of the portrait and the numeral number seen at the blank space of the note when viewed against the light from either side of the note. Its security threads, an embedded thread running vertically across the note, now have bigger lines that are visible when seen against the light.

Hortal said it also has security fibers that only experts can identify real or fake ones.

Security fibers are red and blue visible fibers embedded on the paper at random and glow in colors under ultraviolet light. Its see-through marks, with the word "Pilipino" written in Baybayin, a pre-Spanish Philippine writing system, are seen in complete form when the notes are viewed against the light.

Hortal said the new notes, worth P4 each regardless of the bills' amount, can be hardly imitated and reproduced by counterfeiters because of these new features.

The new appearance of the bills bears the signature of President Benigno Aquino III and BSP head Amando M. Tetangco Jr.

The President's name at the bills confusingly appeared as "Benigno S. Aquino III" but the BSP officials explained that "the President opted to print his name after his father's full name."