Currency Symbol of Bhutan

In 2011, I wrote a short piece on our currency, titled Ngultrum Identity, wherein I have said that the existing symbol of our currency Ngultrum (དངུལ་ཀྲམ་) which is kept as ‘Nu’ could not be taken as our currency symbol because it could be written only in English.

Four years have passed since, but my article can be read like it was written this morning because no development has taken place. We still don’t have a symbol for Ngultrum in a real sense, though it has the ISO 4217 code since its appearance in 1974 that is BTN.

It’s fairly ok to use abbreviation like Nu in countries where English is the national language but for us we have Dzongkha, which we are proud of and using an English abbreviation seems like disregarding our own language. For that matter using a Dzongkha word can also be inconvenient as much of our written works are done in English.

Therefore, it is a conventional requirement for an independent state to have a graphical symbol to denote its national currency. It may seem like a small thing but it’s a status symbol of a nation. It’s like any other symbol that defines our identity as a nation state. It’s not something we should be taking for granted. We should not be so complacent to live with an easy Nu.

Ever since my first article on the subject I have been on a personal mission to create a symbol myself. I have played around with traditional signs, combined letters in Dzongkha, crossbred letters in Dzongkha with English and explored Ranjana script but the more I tried the more complicated my symbols became. I then realized how complex it was to create simple thing.

It was after a long gap that I resumed my mission and recently I found something I was satisfied with. I am sharing it here hoping to find people who could refine it and make it creditable enough to be submitted for consideration to The Royal Monetary Authority. And I found out that for a currency symbol to be implemented it requires the adoption of new Unicode and type formats, which means a computer geeks could help too.

Ngultrum Symbol 

I have taken the 'ངུ' from between 'དངུལ' and changed the direction of the tail a little bit to give it a sense of completeness. 

Inspiration: India got its currency symbol ₹ through an open competition in 2010. The designer D. Udaya Kumar used a combination of Devanagari letter “र” (ra) and the Latin capital letter “R”.

What More is Terrorism?

Fake Nu.1000 notes.(source: BBS)

In such times, when the country is struggling to survive a financial crisis, how could our own people assist outsiders in printing and distributing counterfeit Ngultrum notes (on BBS)?  I am saying outsiders because Bhutan can't have such printers. What more is terrorism to a country? This can't be the first time these brothers are doing this, and they may not be the only Bhutanese men involved it.
The sixteen Nu.1000 notes may be just a part of a bigger plot and these men must take police to the root of the fake money. It's our national luck, as always, that the activity was discovered before it could affect much. However, there could be many other innocent victims that may be known by tomorrow following this timely news on BBS.
For now, we must double check every Nu.1000 note that comes in and goes out of our pocket to be sure.

My Rupee Worries

Even without any knowledge on commerce and economy I always saw this problem coming, I am not bluffing, and I am surprised some are only waking up now. I was in Phuntsholing last winter and had the misfortune of seeing how those four ATMs ran out of cash every hour. Our money was going to India as if Bhutanese economy was suffering from shooting diarrhea.
RMA's sudden measure to curb rupee crunch send panic waves across the country; Import business are threatened, constructions sectors are stunned, industries are shocked... and for once I thought out central bank is trying to cut off the neck that pains instead of healing it. Only today, after Dawa's show on BBS I saw the light, the light that should have been shown long ago. But now is not a bad time either.
However, this temporary measure, I fear, might cause permanent damage to our trade relation with people in Jaigoan. With Indian businessmen already shying away from Ngultrum I foresee sudden inflation in daily commodities in few days time. I have to gamble on weather I should already fill my kitchen with cartons of milk powder and cooking oil. I have already fueled my car -as if the problem would be solved before I run out of fuel again, and that sort of shortsightedness is prevalent among us Bhutanese. And even the central bank.
During the discussion, I didn't hear them talk anything about dollar. But some of us on twitter did a little talk of our own, where we mentioned why not use dollar to buy rupee. The problem is with rupee and we are supposed to have earned good amount of dollar through tourism, why can't we use it?
Without taking long term measures the economy diarrhea will never stop, and the current measure is just a radish corked in the bottom, only to build the pressure of outflow after it's been removed. We may have to look at agriculture seriously so that we don't land up importing what we could grow at home. We should revisit our tourism policy and bring some wise reforms. Our daily tariff of $250 scares many potential tourist from coming and spending in our country.
Of all the things we pride in so much, hydro power puts me to shame. We counted on it to rain rupee on us but the funny export agreements for 30 years with outrageously low tariff would making any difference to our economy during our time. By the time we have full ownership the walls of the dam may fall apart and new projects may have to begin again- followed by new agreements. Last winter's news of importing power from India shocked me 440 volts full.
The only two options we could play with are agriculture and tourism: Agriculture for controlling import and tourism for building economy.

Ngultrum Identity

Ngultrum (Nu) is almost losing its identity even before it had one. Forgive me if you find me ignorant but I can't help wondering why our currency is not acknowledged as it should be. I don't know why we have to pay over Nu.50 for a US$, I am just thankful it is as powerful as Indian Rupee. It's surprising to learn that there are many powerful country whose currency value is lower than ours, which gives us all the reason to be proud of.
However, going by the trend, a kid says, "Mummy, give me ten rupees", and an adult would say, "Do you have change for 500 rupees?" or if it is in Dzongkha, we say "Turu". Nowhere we use the term Ngultrum! On the fuel pumps you will see the rates of fuel reflected in Rs, and every commodity in the shops has price tag written in Rs, that can be forgiven as stuffs are imported. The recent announcement of domestic airfare by civil aviation was in US Dollar, and that was the biggest surprised.

Currency Symbol for Ngultrum for the  time being.

In written scripts we don't yet have a currency symbol, something that can be used to represent Ngultrum universally. The abbreviation Nu. might be mistaken for symbol but it's usable only in English. India realized it and they have come up with symbol for rupees recently. It's beautiful and now they can use the symbol in every language. In Dzongkha, we can't us Nu. therefore it's up to the writers either to write "turu", "ngultrum" or "ruub". Though it's none of my business, I spent many days thinking, designing, discussing, and redesigning a symbol for Ngultrum. I looked at all the currency symbols of the world to gain some insight into it but at the end  I agreed with the fact that it's none of my business after all. But that doesn't mean that Ngultrum can be left without a symbol. We need it now and here! If that can't be done soon, you might chose to use the one that comes to your head when you think of Ngultrum (see the picture).