Bangko Sentral to change P100 color

(Photo from Wikipedia)

Manila—The public often mistake the violet P100 bill from the blue P1000 bill, giving out the larger bill instead of the smaller ones and vice versa. In order to ease confusion, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) will be changing the color of P100 bill.

Released in 2010, the violet and blue-colored bills are part of The New Generation Currency series.

The P100 bill will be transformed into mauve and will have more red undertones. It will be in circulation by January 2016, said Gov. Amando M. Tetangco Jr. of BSP to The Philippine Daily Inquirer.

“Everything will be the same but the color. With this new one, you will really see the difference,” Tetangco said.

Tetangco added that various complaints concerning similarity in color of the current P100 and P1000 bills have been reported to the BSP.

The BSP hopes the change of color will help the public on differentiating P100 bill from P1000 bill.

Twenty percent of Philippine paper bills in circulation are composed of the P100 denomination. The most popular and most widely used is the P20 bill, while the P200, the newest denomination, is the type of bank note that is least frequently used.

The P200 bill was produced due to the perceived demand of a bill between P100 and P500. It turned out that most people often break the P200 bill into two P100 bills, Tetangco said. Due to this, the central bank has started producing lesser P200 bills. Today, only 2 percent of the bank notes in the country are composed of P200 bills.

The central bank no longer produces bank notes with 1985 designs. This type of bank notes is to be completely demonetized by 2017.