The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) responded to the recent controversy about the half-printed banknotes, saying that there was always a possibility of such errors and faults in the notes despite all security checks during large-scale production.  

A social media outrage among Pakistanis was triggered by a video of half-printed banknotes making rounds on the internet on Tuesday, as man, who called himself the bank manager of National Bank of Pakistan’s (NBP) Model Colony branch in Karachi, showed two fresh Rs1000 banknotes, blank on the backside.

“I have no idea how many bundles have been dispatched already. These were returned by a customer and that is how we got to know about it,” he said.

He then showed another bundle saying that same was the case with notes in that stack and every bundle had two such half-printed notes.

In a clarification issued on the matter today, the central bank said that the risk of such faults remains due to large scale printing and production of currency notes.

“Pakistan Security Printing Corporation has a strong mechanism of segregating misprinted banknotes. Though, risk of such faults remains in mass production [of currency notes],” the SBP stated.

It said there is always a possibility of a few misprinted notes reaching the masses despite all quality checks.

“There were merely 10 such misprinted currency notes among the cash bundles dispatched to the NBP branch,” it stated, adding that the said number of half-printed banknotes compared to the total number of notes printed and dispatched to the masses was “very little”.

The central bank further clarified that those who have received such defective notes can exchange them for perfect notes from SBP’s BSC counters.

The SBP is making the internal controllers to avoid such malfunctioning in the future, the bank added.