They want to create an entity to print bills and mint coins
The only thing we were missing. Having at home “the little machine”, as they ironically call in some countries the printing presses dedicated to making legal tender money. The idea is from a legislator who wants to create the Casa de la Moneda in order to print the bills here instead of having to order them abroad.
At the risk of stating the obvious, making banknotes is not printing posters or making cookies. Since the Guaraní was created in 1943 and above all, from the operation of the Central Bank of Paraguay in 1952, the printing of the banknotes that constitute our legal tender currency and cancellation force has always been commissioned to the best houses specialized in the matter. . One of them is the British company Thomas de La Rue, which not only prints banknotes but also manufactures the printers, the paper and the supplies used in one of the most delicate and complex industrial processes, with security guarantees against counterfeiting.
This process does not admit more than a single level of quality, the maximum, with zero errors. The best specialists who take an average of six months to a year to finish a bill participate in the design of the banknotes, made from the mother idea provided by the issuing country.
At Canadian Bank Note, another world-renowned printing house, introducing a new design first looks at how their existing series of notes have performed to improve their security, durability, accessibility and functionality. Then there are the scientists tasked with countering security threats with innovations in anti-counterfeiting substrates, inks, coatings, threads and other accessories. These conditions also apply to the production of passports, identity documents, lottery tickets, visas and other products with high security requirements. As you can see, a complex and highly diversified business, for a very wide range of clients.
Creating the Casa de la Moneda as an autarchic entity, as the project says, is to make way for another white elephant. We already have problems with water, electricity, cement and fuel alcohol. What need is there to raise another problem when today the BCP has everything resolved by tendering the supply of banknotes among the best printers in the world.
Don’t even think of it.