KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has extended the last date for exchanging old banknotes of Rs10, 50, 100 and 1,000 till December 31, 2022.
The central bank extended the last for exchanging old banknotes of Rs10, 50, 100 and 1000 for one year. The people can exchange the old banknotes from any of the SBP offices across the country.
The central bank mentioned that the old currency notes are exchangeable from the offices of the SBP Banking Services Corporations.
These banknotes are exchangeable from SBP BSC Offices located at Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan, Gujranwala, Hyderabad, Sialkot, Sukkur, Bahawalpur, Muzaffarabad and D. I. Khan, the statement reads.
State Bank is the sole issuer of banknotes in the country ensuring an adequate supply of good quality banknotes across the country is among its key strategic goals. SBP collects soiled and unfit banknotes from the market and replaces them with fresh banknotes.
Like other central banks, SBP issues new series of banknotes from time to time and demonetizes the earlier series with the approval of the federal government.
Further, the approval for the demonetization of banknotes is granted by Federal Cabinet on the recommendations of the SBP board in terms of section 25(2) of SBP Act, 1956.
The issuance of new series and demonetization of the old design banknotes helps central banks in checking to counterfeit and ensuring the integrity of banknotes in circulation.
The new series of banknotes was issued from 2005 to 2008 and the old design banknotes have been slowly phased out from circulation.
The federal government has therefore decided to demonetize old design banknotes of Rs 10, 50, 100 and 1000. These notes have ceased to be Legal Tender effective from 1st December 2016.
