Hungarian Forint
Currency

Preface

Hungarian Forint code is HUF and the sign is Ft for the Hungary currency. This was introduced on 1 August 1946 and was the most crucial step of WWII stabilization. This Hungarian Forint as currency remained stable until 1980s.

The transition in the early 1990s decreased the Forint value and in 1991 inflation peaked reaching 35%. In 2001, the inflation was single digit and was declared the Forint to be fully convertible.

This is the only currency used and is still in circulation. Being the European Union member, the Hungarian government is aiming since a long time to replace Hungarian Forint with Euro.

History

Hungarian Forint acquired its name from the Florence city that minted gold coins known as fiorino d’oro. Hungary also used a gold based currency under Charles Robert and in fact many other countries also followed it. In 1946 on 1 August, there was a reintroduction of the forint after the hyperinflation of pengo in 1945-46.

The success of forint was exploited owing to political gains such that the communist took over the state powers in 1948-49. The Pengo was replaced by the forint @ 1 forint=4x1029 pengo.

Historically, forint had 100 filler subdivision, but filler was considered useless and was not in circulation since 1996.

The forint abbreviation is ‘Ft’ and is written after the number. Similarly, ‘f’ is the abbreviation for filler. Forint remained stable for many years and lost its purchasing capacity owing to competitiveness in the 1970s and 1980s.

But, after 1989-90 and since 2000 the forint value became relatively high. Being a part of the EU, there are possibilities of forint getting disappeared by 2012 and 2014 based on the economic situation.

However, situations threaten Hungary to adopt euro currency and owing to this forint were pegged to euro until 26 February, 2008.

Coins

Coins were in denominations of 2, 10, 20 fillérs and 1, 2, 5 forints in 1946 and in 1992 a set of new coins were introduced in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 200 forint. In 1992, 2 and 5 filler coins production was ceased and in 1996 a 100 forint coin was minted replacing the 1992 version as it was considered to be ugly and big and was mistaken to be 20 forint coin.

Banknotes

10 and 100 forint notes were introduced in 1946 and later in 1947-48 another series of higher quality notes of 10, 20 and 100 forint were included in 1953. In 1970 500 forint notes and in 1983 100 forint and in 1991 5000 forint were introduced.

Similarly, between the years 1997 and 2001, a new series of 200, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000 and 20000 was introduced and each banknote depicted a Hungarian politician or leader on the front side and on the reverse side the event related to the front side.