200 Somoni

Tajikistan's currency, the somoni, was introduced in 2000 to replace the Tajik ruble — itself a stopgap issued after the Soviet collapse — at a rate of 1 somoni to 1,000 rubles. The country had spent the intervening years recovering from a devastating civil war that ended in 1997, and the redenomination was as much a psychological break from that period as a technical monetary adjustment. The 200 somoni, a high-denomination note for a country with persistently modest per capita income, was intended partly to reduce the number of notes needed in larger transactions.

Giesecke & Devrient's Leipzig facility has handled Tajik printing since the series began.