20 Centavos

The Philippine National Bank's provincial emergency notes of 1941 are among the more historically charged pieces in Philippine paper money. Issued from the Iloilo City branch just months before the Japanese invasion of December 1941, these circulated during the immediate pre-occupation period when the colonial banking system was rapidly losing its footing. The PNB authorized several regional branches to issue fractional emergency currency that year, partly to address chronic small-denomination shortages exacerbated by wartime hoarding of coins.

Iloilo branch notes are scarcer than those from Manila. Many were destroyed, either during the Japanese advance or in deliberate denial operations intended to keep currency out of occupying hands.