The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Saturday “categorically” denied news reports regarding the issuance of polymer (plastic) banknote series.

“SBP strongly refutes the reports as baseless and without substance,” the central bank said.

The response comes amid reports that the SBP plans to introduce new plastic currency notes to tackle counterfeit money.

“There is no such plan or suggestion currently under consideration regarding the change in the substrate of banknotes from paper to polymer,” the SBP said in a statement.

The central bank said it uses cotton-based paper substrate, which is manufactured locally by the Security Papers Limited, using primarily local raw materials.

Several countries have introduced polymer banknotes into circulation, including Australia, Canada, Chile, Nigeria, New Zealand, Romania, and the United Kingdom.

According to various researches, polymer banknotes offer several advantages over traditional paper notes, including increased durability, resistance to counterfeiting, and reduced environmental impact.

Earlier this week, few misprinted currency notes of Rs 1,000/ were found in fresh packets delivered to a bank branch on Tuesday.

On this issue, SBP explained that despite all and multiple quality checks, few of the misprinted banknotes are likely to reach banks or the public.

“Internal controls are being further improved to avoid this type of incident in future”, it added.

Production processes of such large magnitude are prone to some imperfections. Therefore, there is a possibility that in-spite of all quality checks, certain pieces of misprinted banknotes may end up with banks or public, the central bank added.