POISHA OVER TIME
How many of you remember the eight scalloped, wavy 10 poisha coin with a symbolic happy family image in the middle? What about the octagonal shaped 50 poisha with a bunch of food items like fish, hen, pineapple and banana on it?
Even though these coins, along with 1, 5 and 25 poisha coins are not circulated anymore, they are the important evidence of our economic and social history.
In 1971, when Bangladesh started its journey as an independent nation, we had Pakistani rupee as our interim currency. The history of Bangladeshi coins experienced a drastic transformation in 1972 when Taka replaced rupee as our new currency.
Within the next three years of having taka as our currency, Bangladesh was introduced with a range of poishas in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 25 poisha and 1 taka coin. These coins used to show variety in terms of size, material, minting technologies and images featured on their reverse side. The 1 poisha coin was struck in aluminum for example, whereas the 25 poisha coin was in steel and 1taka coin in copper-nickel. With time, we are now left with 1, 2 and 5 taka coins only. For minting coins we mostly use core materials like aluminum and steel. Other than having coins for regular circulation, the government of Bangladesh also started issuing coins to signify various remarkable national events like international Mother Language Day 2000, ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, 150th Birthday of Rabindranath Tagore 2011 and 40th Victory Anniversary of Bangladesh 2011.
Source: Coins from Bangladesh published by Nymphea Publication in collaboration with Standard Chartered Bank, Bangladesh.
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