MUNICIPAL ISSUES

Municipal notes were issued for the purpose of providing small change as needed by local commerce. The one big difference between these local issues and the provincial notes is that (with a few specified exceptions) the locals were not redeemable after the war.

Municipal issues existed out of sheer necessity; most provincial notes were in the higher denominations, and as paper was so hard to get, it was not considered feasible to supply large amounts of small denomination notes. It was simply left up to the municipal governments and smaller military contingents to meet their own needs for small change as best as they could, The procedure usually followed was to deposit the needed amount of redeemable provincial notes as security for the local notes to be issued. Thus, while the local notes were not redeemable as such by the Philippine government, they were always exchangeable on demand for larger denomination provincial notes which, of course, were redeemable.

Local issues are basically much scarcer as a group than many provincial issues, as they were made for use only in a small area or areas and generally in quite limited numbers. In appearance they varied greatly. Some were well printed while others were crude to the extreme of illegibility. Often the notes carried signatures (written or printed) of local and/or military officials; some communities went so far as to organize local currency boards similar in many respects to the provincial issuing bodies. A great many important varieties exist...

..... a number of issues seem to be backed by U.S. Army Forces. Most of such notes were in fact only local issues, probably made under the combined authority of local and military officials...



 *From:       Philippine Emergency and Guerilla
                    Currency of World War II
       By:       Neil Shafer