The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said it has sorted out the glitch in printing machine that have caused the defective 100-peso banknotes dispensed by a Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) user from an automated teller machine (ATM) on December 25.
Carlyn Pangilinan, central bank’s managing director, said in a press conference on Thursday that her office had tracked 33 pieces of released misprinted notes, saying that only 19 of those bills were recovered to date.
Citing that new printing machines were brought only last month, Pangilinan explained, “We have resolved the mechanical cause of printing error that led to the faceless notes. The BSP has identified the affected machine and action has been taken.”
The BSP came under fire on Tuesday after Earla Anna Yehey shared on her Facebook account photos of “faceless” 100-peso bills she withdrawn on an ATM of a BPI branch in Quezon City. The banknote has a blank space where the late President Manuel Roxas’ portrait should have been. Aside from the faceless bill, the word in “Republika (Republic)” and “n” in the word “ng (of)” in the country’s name were also blurry.
As for the other bills, Pangilinan stressed the central bank last week discovered misprinted 50-peso bills before these were brought out to the public.
“They discovered it before it was released to the public. This was last week. P50 bills. It has a different misprint. Very few. It was just communicated to us by the bank. They e-mailed to us,” Pangilinan added.
The managing director asked people who still have some of the misprinted banknotes in their possession to surrender them to the BSP so the bank could record them. The bills can be turned over to either the central bank’s main office in Manila or its security plant complex located in Quezon City.
The bank assured the public that the faceless 100-peso bills are “legal tender,” but is not advisable to be used for transactions as it lacks security features.