5 Pa'anga

Thomas De La Rue has printed Tongan currency since the kingdom's first modern banknotes, making this a long-standing production relationship rather than a one-off contract. The National Reserve Bank of Tonga was established in 1989, separating central banking functions from the Bank of Tonga, and notes issued under its authority carry that institutional distinction.

The security specification here — watermark and thread only — is relatively spare for a mid-denomination note printed in this period, when De La Rue was actively promoting more complex substrate and feature packages to Pacific island clients.