BANKNOTES OF SURINAME
These notes are available for your viewing pleasure!
Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.
Banknotes Denominated in Surinamese Gulden
Banknotes Denominated in Surinamese Dollars
History of the Surinamese
The gulden or in English: guilder was the currency of Suriname from 1962 until 2004. It was divided into 100 cent. It was initially at par with the Dutch gulden, but suffered from high inflation in the beginning of the 1990s. The Surinamese gulden was replaced by the dollar on 1 January 2004 at a rate of 1 dollar = 1000 gulden.
Originally the denominations of coins were 1, 5, 10, 25 cent and 1 gulden. Only the 1 gulden coin is made of precious metal and it was short-lived. The design of the cent coins has never changed, and the same design was extended to 100 and 250 cent coins in 1987. However, the metal compositions and therefore the colours have changed.
Prior to the introduction of the Surinamese dollar, banknotes were issued in denominations of 5, 10, 25, 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 gulden. The last gulden series of banknotes was issued in 2000, this issue has a flower on one side and a bird on the other.
The Surinamese Dollar
The Surinamese dollar has been the currency of Suriname since 2004 and like the former guilder currency is divided into 100 cent.
The dollar replaced the Surinamese gulden on 1 January 2004, with one dollar equal to 1000 gulden. Initially, only coins were available, with banknotes delayed until mid-February, reportedly due to a problem at the printer, The Canadian Banknote Company.
To save cost of manufacturing, coins of less than 5 gulden were all made legal for their face value in the new dollar currency. The old coins denominated in cent (i.e., 1/100 gulden) were declared to be worth their face value in the new cents, negating the necessity of producing new coins. Thus, for example, an old 50 cent coin, previously worth half a gulden, was now worth half a dollar. Thus, these coins increased their purchasing power by 1000 fold overnight.
Amendment 121 of ISO 4217 gave the currency the code SRD to the Surinamese Dollar replacing the ISO 4217 code SRG for the former Surinamese gulden.
BACK TO HOMEPAGE
Page created: 21 March 2007
Last Update: 30 October 2007
Maps are provided by Graphic Maps
All maps provided by them bear their copyright information.
All scans shown here are of actual notes from my collection unless otherwise noted.
Images and content unless otherwise noted are copyrighted.
(c) 2006 - 2007 Will's Online World Paper Money Gallery