Bhutan's Royal Monetary Authority was only established in 1982, replacing the Bank of Bhutan's currency functions, and this 1 Ngultrum issue falls squarely in the institution's early years of building an independent monetary framework. Thomas De La Rue's involvement was essentially inevitable — the printer handled a substantial portion of the world's smaller sovereign issuers during this period, and Bhutan had neither the infrastructure nor the print volumes to justify domestic production.
A watermark alone as the sole security feature reflects the modest counterfeiting risk attached to a low-denomination note in a country whose economy remained heavily non-monetized through the late 1980s.
Bhutan's Royal Monetary Authority was only established in 1982, replacing the Bank of Bhutan's currency functions, and this 1 Ngultrum issue falls squarely in the institution's early years of building an independent monetary framework. Thomas De La Rue's involvement was essentially inevitable — the printer handled a substantial portion of the world's smaller sovereign issuers during this period, and Bhutan had neither the infrastructure nor the print volumes to justify domestic production.
A watermark alone as the sole security feature reflects the modest counterfeiting risk attached to a low-denomination note in a country whose economy remained heavily non-monetized through the late 1980s.