Public urged to replace old notes with new ones

Less than two months before the extended deadline for exchanging old peso bills with new ones, the Cebu Bankers Club (CBC) has appealed to the public to have these notes replaced if they still have them.

CBC president Fritz Palileo said they may visit the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)-Cebu Regional Office to have bills belonging to the New Design Series (NDS), which lost their monetary value last July, exchanged.

“We are encouraging those who have these notes to proceed to the BSP office to have them replaced,” he said in a text message to Cebu Daily News.
The BSP’s Monetary Board, which is the central bank’s highest policymaking body, has reset to Dec. 29 this year the deadline to exchange these notes due to numerous requests from the general public.

Palileo said banks in Cebu will soon be posting BSP Circular No. 977, extending the deadline for the replacement of NDS banknotes, in their bank premises.

At the BSP-Cebu Regional Office, replacement will be done from 9 a.m. onward and will only be accommodated until 2 p.m., Palileo said.

Cash exchange will be at a maximum of P100,000, and the owner of the NDS notes will be issued a check or his/her account will be credited directly with the amount in exchange, he added.

If the NDS notes are mutilated, owners need to paste it in a paper provided by the BSP.

Lawyer Leonides Sumbi, BSP-Cebu Regional Office director, earlier said they have received an influx of requests from holders of old banknotes even as the central bank announced it will no longer extend the deadline.

She said most of these noteholders who came to her office are tourists, overseas Filipino workers, and locals who claimed they bought peso bills from money changers abroad or that they did not know about the deadline, even after it had been publicized and extended several times already.

The BSP official added that there were even isolated cases where some “forgot” where they put their money and just discovered that they had as much as P400,000 in old bills.

Since July 1 this year, only the New Generation Currency (NGC) banknotes, launched in 2010, can be used for daily transactions.

Last June, then BSP governor Amando Tetangco Jr. said they had no plan to extend the June 30 deadline to exchange or replace NDS with NGC bills.
The BSP originally set the demonetization of the NDS bills on Jan. 1 this year. Last December, the BSP moved the deadline to March 31, but officials said in March that there was public clamor to extend the deadline anew.

Since demonetized, the NDS banknotes launched in 1985 no longer have monetary value.

Filipinos living or working abroad who had registered up to P50,000 in old bills could still exchange their NDS banknotes at any BSP office until Dec. 31 this year.