BSP welcomes replacement of dirty, unfit banknotes at the Lingayen Tourism and Trade Expo
PANGASINAN – The public may now bring dirty and crumpled Philippine bank notes that are already unfit for use to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for replacement.
The BSP-North Luzon Regional Office and Dagupan Branch announced Tuesday that it will replace unfit or dirty bank notes with clean and fit ones on April 29-30 at the Tourism and Trade Expo in Lingayen, Pangasinan.
The BSP’s mandate is to preserve and maintain the currency integrity by effecting an expeditious withdrawal of unfit or dirty notes so that only clean or fit notes will remain in circulation.
Gomer Gomez, BSP North Luzon Regional Office senior research specialist, said that aside from money exchange, the BSP will also offer free seminars, brochures, and posters on currency and financial literacy as well as basic knowledge on counterfeit banknote identification.
Visitors are encouraged to come early and may have a chance to win special tokens by playing the virtual roleta, and even avail of a henna tattoo.
The BSP will start entertaining those who want to have their unfit bills changed at 9 a.m. until 2 p.m.
Gomez clarified that for mutilated or damaged bills, the bank will replace them if the banknotes pass the rules of BSP.
One of the rules for a bill to be replaced with a new one is that ‘the remaining portion of the bill should be at least 60 percent of the original size of the banknote.’
“A portion of the signatures of the President of the Philippines or the Governor of the BSP remains and there is still the Embedded Security Thread and or Windowed Security Thread unless it was erased due to fire, water chemical or bitten by termites or rodents and the like,” explained Gomez.