THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) came under fire from Senator Aquilino Martin “Koko” dL. Pimentel III for issuing “impractical P1,000 bill polymer notes.”
Citing mounting complaints about its practical use as a legal tender, Pimentel prodded the BSP to “shut down production and stop issuing” the controversial P1,000 polymer banknotes.
The senator filed a resolution paving the way for a Senate inquiry into “the BSP’s inclination to constantly change banknotes and coins at the expense of Filipino taxpayers.”
For a start, Pimentel pointed out the BSP’s decision to “use polymer instead of the indigenous abaca (also known as Manila hemp) in its new P1,000 bills.” He noted that the decision is not only detrimental to the livelihood of local abaca producers but is also “very impractical to many Filipinos who are used to storing their bills on their pockets, purses or their trifold wallets.” Moreover, the administration lawmaker laments in a statement that “the issuance of these polymer bills to replace our old banknotes is absolutely absurd.”
“Our bills should be designed in such a way that they can withstand a minimum amount of abuse like crumpling and folding,” he stressed, adding: “Parang gusto pa yata nila ilagay sa frame yung bills para kunwari matibay.” [It seems they want to put the bills in a frame to make them appear strong.]
The Senator suggested that the BSP “should suspend the production of these banknotes as soon as possible.”
Pimentel also pointed out that while polymers are supposed to be sturdier than abaca, it doesn’t have the needed flexibility to allow people to safely store their bills in their pockets, purses, money clips, or even small wallets, warning that polymers are also “very sensitive to chemicals.”
Moreover, he noted additional concerns over replacing the abaca as a material for producing the P1,000 banknotes could impact negatively on the country’s $97.1-million per year abaca industry. The figure represents exports of abaca fiber and manufactures.
For its part, the Department of Agriculture affirmed the Philippines dominates the global abaca trade as the country supplies about 87.5 percent of the world’s abaca fiber requirements with Ecuador and Costa Rica the remaining 12.5 percent as of 2016. In 2016, abaca was planted on 180,302 hectares (ha) with production reaching 72,000 metric tons (MT).
At the same time, Pimentel also questioned BSP’s “rather arbitrary and hasty changes in our monetary design for the purpose of crafting legislation on this matter.”
In filing a resolution on the issue, the lawmaker said there is a need to find out the answers to several questions he has whenever the BSP changes the design of our coins and notes.
- Who else or what other agencies or offices are involved or consulted whenever a decision changing the monetary design of the Philippine Peso is made by the BSP?
- How much is the cost to the Filipino taxpayers whenever banknotes and coinage designs are changed?
- What were the problems encountered by the BSP when the New Design Series was demonetized?
- Whether or not there have been complaints from the public?
- What are the reasons behind the BSP’s decision to change the current P1,000 banknote, said to be the most difficult to counterfeit, to be “improved” by the new P1,000 polymer note?
- Whether or not the new P1,000 polymer note is truly a “limited series” considering that the BSP announced that around 500 million copies of this new polymer note, or P500 billion in total worth, will be printed?