A foreign exchange certificate, sometimes abbreviated to FEC, is a type of currency. Foreign exchange certificates are sometimes used by governments as a surrogate for a national currency, where the national currency is usually subject to exchange controls or is not convertible. Most examples of foreign exchange certificate have an exchange rate higher than the national currency, being either pegged to a hard currency, or their exchange rate determined by the central bank.
Some countries which have employed FECs in the past include:
- Soviet Union
- China
- Myanmar (until March 2013)
- East Germany (forum checks, pegged to the West German Deutsche Mark)
- Ghana - it was illegal to import and export Ghanaian cedi banknotes (around 1980)
- North Korea
- Cuba (Today's convertible peso, to an extent, is a form of FEC)
- Czechoslovakia (Tuzex)
- Bulgaria (Corecom)
- Poland
Other articles related to "foreign, foreign exchange, exchange":
... Britain, and Japan, looting nearly every foreign property and almost assassinating the Japanese consul ... Scrip in August 1948, outlawing private ownership of gold, silver, and foreign exchange, collecting all such precious metals and foreign exchange from the people and issuing the Gold Standard Scrip in exchange ...
Famous quotes containing the words certificate, foreign and/or exchange:
“God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in God’s coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is a close tie of affection between sovereigns and their subjects; and as chaste wives should have no eyes but for their husbands, so faithful liegemen should keep their regards at home and not look after foreign crowns. For my part I like not for my sheep to wear a stranger’s mark nor to dance after a foreigner’s whistle.”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.”
—Lewis Thomas (b. 1913)