The guilder is the official currency of two of the five islands that once made up the Netherlands Antilles: Curacao and Sint Maarten. The other three islands, Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius, adopted the U.S. dollar on 1 January 2011. The Antillean guilder is scheduled to be replaced on Curacao and Sint Maarten by the new Caribbean guilder on 1 January 2012.
The Antillean guilder is issued by the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten as the sole authority over the monetary systems of the two islands. The bank was established in 1826 by the Dutch King to oversee the financial affairs of the island colonies. The bank also issued credit to local merchants in order to stimulate trade. Since 1971, the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten has been engineering monetary policy of the Netherlands Antilles to keep the value of the guilder as stable as possible with respect to the U.S. dollar. This was accomplished by pegging the value of the guilder to the U.S. dollar at 1 NAf: 1.79 USD. The main reason for the peg is that 60 percent of the islands’ national trade is with the United States. The bank also oversees foreign exchange reserves on the islands and exerts control over the economy by how credit is extended to commercial banks.
Then introduction of the guilder was a natural extension of the use of the Dutch guilder in the Netherlands Antilles during the 18th century. After a period of circulating a currency called the Curacao reaal based on the Spanish dollar, the Dutch guilder was reintroduced to the Netherlands Antilles in 1828. Before 1952, all local currency was issued in the name of Curacao. The Netherlands Antilles did come into use until 1952.
Antillean guilder coins circulate in several denominations. The 1-cent and 5-cent coins are minted from aluminum. The 10-cent and 25-cent coins are minted from nickel-bonded steel. The 50-cent, 1-guilder, 2 ½-guilder and 5-guilder coins are minted from aureate-bonded steel. The current banknote series was issued in 1998. It is based on the previous series, which depicts different species of birds for each denomination. The denominations of banknotes include 10, 25, 50 and 100 guilders.