SBP looks into circulating misprinted Rs. 1,000 notes

Despite having a strong mechanism in place to prevent misprinting, Pakistan central bank has not ruled out the possibility of having issued misprinted banknotes worth Rs. 1,000 to commercial banks, which then reached citizens and entered the national currency.

A State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) representative on Wednesday that commercial banks and private customers who have received the erroneously printed notes can swap them at the bank branches where they were originally obtained. Additionally, they can swap the notes at any one of the central bank’s 16 authorized countrywide locations.

A one-minute video that showed certain Rs1,000 notes with no writing on the backside previously went viral on Tuesday. The person who created the video, who remained out of sight from the camera but introduced himself as the branch manager of the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) in Model Colony, Karachi, using his voice in the background, held up the misprinted notes. He claimed to have received new notes in the amounts of Rs. 1,000, Rs. 500, and Rs. 5,000. He held up two Rs. 1,000 notes that were flawless from the front. But when he flipped the notes over, the printing on the reverse was not complete. He expressed ignorance of the number of freshly produced currency notes that were misprinted, claiming that many packages had already been given to clients.

When a consumer returned two of these notes to the bank, the problem was discovered. Another bundle of Rs. 1,000 notes with two incorrectly printed notes was presented by the management. Later, he questioned the issue and said that every parcel had at least two misprinted notes in it. An NBP representative responded that the matter had been brought to the notice of upper management and was being looked into when they were contacted to confirm the veracity of the footage.

The official said that the letters had been received that morning (perhaps on the holiday morning) and disseminated to the public, expressing astonishment that the video had appeared on a public holiday (Tuesday, the first day of Ramadan). Though he wasn’t sure if the video was shot on a different day, its appearance on Tuesday disproved his suspicions that it wasn’t real.

The SBP source said that when customers came to exchange the misprinted notes, personnel at public counters would verify that the issued notes still had their security features. He clarified that although while the printing press generates millions of notes in a single cycle and has a strong mechanism in place to monitor the quality and reject misprinted notes, some misprinted notes may still inadvertently get into circulation.

The NBP Model Colony branch received only ten misprinted notes, according to a press release from the central bank. Under the State Bank of Pakistan (Note Refund) Regulations, 1963, it was specified that misprinted banknotes received by the public or commercial banks might be exchanged for suitable banknotes at any office of the State Bank of Pakistan Banking Services Corporation (SBP-BSC) across the nation.

Errors can occur in large-scale industrial systems. Therefore, some misprinted banknotes may find up with banks or the general public despite rigorous quality checks. Nonetheless, it said that SBP-BSC counters are where such banknotes may be exchanged. A strong quality control system is in place at Pakistan Security Printing Corporation (PSPC), the printing division of SBP, to separate and stop the flow of incorrectly printed banknotes into circulation. Even if there are occasionally misprinted notes, the established checks and balances allow for their detection. But, whether in wealthy nations or not, human-made systems are always subject to mistake, regardless of how reliable and efficient they are.

In the current situation, just ten (10) misprinted banknotes were found in the shipment of NBP’s Model Colony Branch. This is a little amount in comparison to the total amount of notes created and in circulation in the nation. However, the statement added, internal controls are being reinforced to stop such incidents from happening again.