5 Rupiah

The 1959 Indonesian currency reform — Decree No. 2 of December 1959 — simultaneously redenominated the rupiah and froze large-denomination bank accounts, a blunt instrument designed to suppress inflation and drain liquidity from the black market. These low-denomination notes, printed by De La Rue in London, were unaffected by the redenomination itself but circulated into an economy that had just been deliberately contracted by government fiat.

De La Rue held the Bank Indonesia printing contract through much of the 1950s before domestic production at Peruri gradually absorbed the work in later decades.