eight Pacific territories

New currency plans for eight Pacific territories

People in eight South Pacific territories will have the job of getting accustomed to new currency soon following the changeover to decimal currency in Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue and Western Samoa, and with the introduction of new )anknotes in the four French territories.

EW decimal notes and coins to begin replacing £sd in Tonga on ril 3 arrived in Nukualofa early February aboard the MV Waimate. fhe new unit of currency will be pa’anga, equal to one Australian lar. This will be divided into 100 iti (cents).

'here will be notes in denomina is of one-half, one, two, five and pa’anga; and coins in denomina is of one pa’anga, 50 seniti, 20, five, two and one seniti. tecause of a machine breakdown he Royal Mint in London, where new coins are being minted, the pa’anga coins could not be iped with the main consignment the Waimate. But they are ex ted to reach Nukualofa before Day on April 3. d present, Tonga uses its own knotes and Australian coins. Its ency is on a par with that of tralia. l Nukualofa report says that the n traders in Nukualofa will have :ial cashiers in their shops from Day to change the old currency he new, and that customers will isked to convert their cash before ing purchases.

Cook Islands change

i the Cook Islands, where New and currency is used, plans are and to change over from pounds, ings and pence some time after 1 Zealand does so on July 10. he tentative changeover date is ust 1, but no final decision had i announced when PIM went to s. ew Zealand’s new coins will all ' the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II me side. The 50c, 20c, 10c and oins will be of cupro-nickel; the nd Ic, of bronze. soc coin depicts Captain k’s bark Endeavour and Mt. iont; the 20c, a kiwi; the 10c, a iri carved head; the sc, a tuatara ird); the 2c, two golden kowhai ers; and the Ic, a stylised fern

The secretary of the New Zealand Decimal Currency Board, Mr. J.

Searle, visited Rarotonga in December to give lectures on the new currency and to distribute booklets in Maori.

Subsequently, with the same object, he visited the New Zealand territory of Niue.

Niue will change to decimal cur rency on the same day as New Zea land, but there will be no dual currency period, as there has been in Australia or will be in New Zealand.

This is because Niue (population: 5,200) is so small that it is possible to recall all old currency from circulation and replace it immediately with the new notes and coins.

Nevertheless, there is an estimated £lOO,OOO in circulation on the island —or hidden under mattresses and in other safe places.

Western Samoan plans

Western Samoa, which now uses its own banknotes and New Zealand silver, will also change over to decimal currency on July 10. The cur rency will then become all-Samoan.

The new unit of currency will be the tala (dollar), which will be on a par with the New Zealand dollar.

The cent will be called sene.

The Royal Mint in London is minting the new Samoan coins in denominations of 1,2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 sene; and $190,000 worth of these coins are expected in Apia by DC Day. At the same time, the Bank of Western Samoa, which is the issuing authority, will have $2 million worth of banknotes from New Zealand ready to issue in denominations of one, two and 10 tala. Later, there will be notes in denominations of five and 50 tala.

The four French territories in the Pacific—New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, and the French side of the Anglo-French New Hebrides—are to have new banknotes soon issued by the Caisse Centrale de Co-operation Economique in France.

In the past, the issuing authority has been the Banque de ITndo-Chine

—one of the few private organisations in the world still issuing and con trolling the currency of an entire territory.

The Caisse Centrale operates under the strict eye of the Governor of the Banque de France, and has an office in Noumea.

Mr. Jacques Giscard d’Estaing, a high financial authority of the French Government and a cousin of the former Gaullist Minister of Finance, was recently in Noumea to organise the banknote changeover.

The notes issued by the Banque de ITndo-Chine are of the same design for all territories, but those intended for New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna bear the word “Noumea”; those for the New Hebrides are stamped “Nouvelles Hebrides”; and those for French Polynesia carry the word “Papeete”.

The larger denominations of the notes are approximately octavo in size, or, in the words of a recent visitor to New Caledonia, “almost as large as a news sheet”.

PlM’s Noumea correspondent says that no details of the new notes have been announced, but the old notes will be withdrawn gradually as the new notes go into circulation.

The new issuing authority will also conduct limited business such as short and medium-term loan dis counting.

A report from Tahiti says that the new notes will be smaller than the old ones.