Caracas.- The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) announced this Friday the incorporation of three new banknotes into the monetary cone, the equivalent of 200 thousand, 500 thousand and one million Bolivarian, which will be the highest face value, with a value of 52 cents, according to the official rate.
The new banknotes will start circulating “gradually” from next Monday, according to a short message from BCV in which he assures that “they come to complete and optimize the current monetary cone, in order to meet the requirements of the national economy”.
Currently, the largest nominal bill is 50,000 bolivars, about two cents per dollar at the exchange rate, so the use of paper money in Venezuela has almost completely disappeared in favor of cards.
But The Venezuelan economy It goes through a de facto transactional dollarization and, for the most part, prices are expressed in the US currency, when traders show it.
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The three new monetary species will have the image on the obverse Simon Bolivar, a design almost identical to that of banknotes that are no longer used today.
The 200,000 and 500,000 bolivars have the image of the Liberator’s mausoleum, integrated in the National Pantheon, while the one million one shows on the reverse the commemorative image of the Bicentennial of the Battle of Carabobo, decisive in the War of Independence.
The last time the monetary cone was expanded was in June 2019, when the notes of 10 thousand, 20 thousand and 50 thousand bolivars were incorporated, which were then equivalent to 1.62; $ 3.25 and $ 8.14, respectively.
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In August 2018, in Venezuela a new monetary cone began to circulate after the government of Nicolas Maduro ordered the elimination of five zeros from the national currency, bolívar, which was then called bolívar fuerte and began to bear the surname “sovereign”, as a measure to which it tried to cope with the hyperinflation in which the country has lived since November 2017.
In 2008, the then president Hugo Chavez launched another currency conversion process that removed three zeros from the currency, which was renamed bolívar fuerte.
In other words, eight zeros were amputated from the current currency, officially called the Bolivarian sovereign.
Three new banknotes will be incorporated into the current monetary con, as part of the expansion of the current family of monetary species.#BCV pic.twitter.com/HdUDbrrZ5F
– Central Bank of Venezuela (@BCV_ORG_VE) March 5, 2021
jabf / lsm