Catalog
50 Kyats
| Issuer | Central Bank of Myanmar |
|---|---|
| Year | 1977-1997 |
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| Size | 145 × 70 mm |
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| Obverse description | The right half of the note is dominated by a large intaglio vignette of a seated Chinthe (mythical lion-guardian), rendered in rich dark red-brown tones with intricate detail. The centre field carries a multicolour guilloche underprint in green and pink, with the denomination in Burmese script at centre. The issuer's name in Burmese script runs along the top border, with the numeral "50" in arabics at upper right and the Burmese numeral at upper left, repeated at lower right. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်ဗဟိုဘဏ် ၅၀ 50 ငါးဆယ်ကျပ် (Translation: Central Bank of Myanmar 50 50 Fifty Kyats) |
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| Comments |
Myanmar's Security Printing Works, established in Rangoon in the early 1970s, produced this note domestically at a time when the Ne Win government had made self-sufficiency a matter of policy as much as economics. The long production run — spanning two decades under the Burma Socialist Programme Party and then into the SLORC period — means the series bridges two distinct political regimes without a design change, which is itself telling.
Watermarking was the sole security measure, a notably thin specification by the standards of the period. Known forgeries circulated in border trade zones, particularly along the Thai frontier, where the kyat's artificial official exchange rate made black-market arbitrage profitable enough to justify the effort.