State Bank rejects allegations of counterfeit currency

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Tuesday rejected allegations of fake currency issuance by some banks during Eid-ul-Azha, saying it was employing all available resources to control the menace of counterfeit currency in the country.
“While the primary responsibility to check the influx of counterfeit notes lies with the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), the SBP has adopted a three pronged strategy to manage this risk,” the central bank said in a statement. “The strategy aims at ensuring state of the art security features in our banknotes, which are difficult to counterfeit, developing necessary capacity and infrastructure with banks to issue genuine and authenticated banknotes to the public; and creating awareness amongst the general public about the security features of our banknotes,” it said.
The SBP has issued a new series of banknotes between 2005-2008 with significantly enhanced security features comparable with those of euro, pound sterling, and US dollar.
The banks are required to issue only sorted cash to the public from their cash counters and ATMs. The cash received in the branches cannot be issued unless sorted. Bulk of the sorting activity is, however, manual and vulnerable to human errors.
The SBP has advised banks to install banknotes authentication and sorting machines. From January 2, 2017, the banks will only be issuing machine authenticated banknotes from their branches and ATMs. The SBP is also installing state of the art high speed banknote processing machines in its subsidiary SBP-BSC, besides using the desk top note sorting machines.
The success of these initiatives in minimising the currency counterfeiting will, among others, also depend on public cooperation in reporting of fake banknotes to the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). Reporting by the people is an important step towards helping LEAs to apprehend the individuals/groups involved in the menace of currency counterfeiting.